To celebrate the first 30 years of SISR's activity, the Executive Committee felt it would be worthwhile to take this happy occasion to recall, with legitimate pride, the successes and the intense activity carried out so far by our Society (12 National Conferences, 3 International Conferences, 8 Seminars on Accounting History, 2 editions of the School of Historical Research Methodology, 12 years of the journal Contabilità e Cultura Aziendale, 3 Memoranda of Understanding with international societies, more than 250 members, and much more). Likewise, we felt that this anniversary could be the starting point for a necessary reflection on the mission of the Society and its orientation towards the future.
The current phase is transforming the reality and the role of universities, not only in Italy, following (sometimes frantically) the dynamics that characterise our society in a global sense.
Many changes have already taken place and many others are looming on the horizon, and they do not always seem to promise positive developments. What has been envisaged and tenaciously pursued over the past decades deserves to be reflected upon, in order to be protected and/or reconsidered.
For SISR the fundamental reference is its Manifesto, drafted and approved in 1994 on the occasion of its tenth anniversary. That document defined the meaning of historical research, the object and method of Accounting History, the role of Accounting in university faculties, the relationship of historical studies to the development of young scholars, and the very mission of SISR. We wish to return to this document in our reflection in order to continue SISR's successful path.
The questions were put to Antonio Amaduzzi, Maria Bergamin, Umberto Bertini, Giuseppe Bruni, Giuseppe Catturi, Gianfranco Cavazzoni, Luciano D'Amico, Rosella Ferraris Franceschi, Giuseppe Galassi, Francesco Poddighe and Francesco Vermiglio.
The questions we asked them were grouped into the following two areas of reflection:
- At the time SISR was founded and in its first years of activity, what factors characterised interest in historical studies in the Italian and international academic scene?
What factors enabled SISR's success in the second half of the 1980s and the first half of the 1990s?
Are these factors still present and, if not, what other factors should we identify? - On SISR's tenth anniversary, and on the basis of the experience gained during those first ten years, the SISR Manifesto was drafted. When it was defined, that Manifesto represented the very essence of SISR's mission, identifying its lines of research, emphasising its research method and, in short, identifying a series of conceptual “categories” and a “language” to which we have constantly referred for years.
Provocatively, twenty years after it was written, can we still rely on that Manifesto?
How much, and what, of that document remains intact in its programmatic and strategic value? What changes in recent years might have altered the meaning of some of its conceptual categories?
Which terms and which of their meanings might have changed?
What is missing from that document, if anything?
Thinking back to the changes over the years, does the definition of historical method proposed in the document retain its full value?
List of interviews (in Italian):
- Umberto Bertini (starts at 0:00, interview length 9:35)
- Giuseppe Bruni (starts at 9:36, interview length 10:27)
- Giuseppe Catturi (starts at 20:04, interview length 10:55)
- Francesco Poddighe (starts at 31:00, interview length 7:09)
- Maria Bergamin (starts at 38:10, interview length 12:21)
- Luciano D'Amico (starts at 1:50:44, interview length 6:24)
- Antonio Amaduzzi (starts at 50:32, interview length 6:17)
- Gianfranco Cavazzoni (starts at 56:50, interview length 11:27)
- Rosella Ferraris Franceschi (starts at 1:08:18, interview length 22:00)
- Giuseppe Galassi (starts at 1:30:19, interview length 8:50)
- Francesco Vermiglio (starts at 1:39:10, interview length 11:33)
{youtube} https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-aznApm6bbw {/youtube}
