Articles

The concept of "Being" from an accounting perspective. Is there a normative reality beyond the establishment of what is?

Introduction

In the following essay I will refer extensively to two books and one article. One is a recent book on population demographics, called People Quake, by an author named Fred Pearce.¹ The other is The Foundations of Social Research, by Michael Crotty.² As and where appropriate I have referred to other seminal papers on qualitative accounting research or demographics related topics, including the seminal work by Wai Fong Chua (1986),³ which discusses three keyresearch approaches, being positivism, interpretivism and critical enquiry.

The reason for including the first reference work, People Quake, is that demographics and demographically related accounting processes and forecasts are an essential part of our world. We are all expected to be part of a regular national census process with outcomes that are not only numerical but also qualitative. As I will identify throughout this essay, the models, forecasts and prognoses for population growth have been instrumental in creating much of the world as we see it today. They form a basis for many of the essentialist beliefs that underpin modern thought, including accounting frameworks. After all, you only need to account if you believe resources are limited and the supply curve fixed within certain maxima and minima.

A population census is also an excellent analogy to the accountant's generally accepted responsibility of establishing a true and fair view of an entity's financial position. Similarly, the national and global population numbers and forecasts that have been established and publicized since the time of Malthus⁴ are a good example of an extrapolation and resulting conclusions, based on what currently is.

Similar to demographers and demographic commentators, the results from accounting and accounting research, as well as from the financial analysts and other stakeholders that work from sets of financial accounts, have a material impact on our daily lives. Not least the dominant assumptions related to the concept of limited resources, resultant competition for resources, profit maximizing behaviours in economic models and so forth. These are fundamental economic and accounting issues at a national and global level, wherein accounting reflects the underlying economic transactions and flows at both micro and macro level. As Chua (1986) notes, a dominant assumption of mainstream accounting is that there exists a "single goal of utility-maximization is assumed for individuals and firms" ⁵

By interspersing the essay with such references and examples I aim to show how materially and dramatically such numbers have impacted on our everyday lives in the absence of any defined and agreed clarity as to whether numbers should state what is rather than what should be. In the process I will explain the background to some numbers and commonly accepted beliefs that we take for granted in our everyday lives. This critical evaluation will follow a structured outline, discussing the statement examined through three different lenses and philosophical frameworks, or worldviews, as Chua has noted, which will be discussed in this essay. ⁶

A positivist perspective

Positivism as a theoretical perspective is linked to the epistemology of objectivism. This holds that there is no meaning in an object that is in any way created by the observer or accounting professional. An example is provided in Crotty⁷ where he uses the example of a tree. He proceeds to explain that a tree is a tree regardless of the observer, and that trees existed as trees even without or before observers. Positivism holds that we can determine whether an object is a tree through scientific enquiry, logic, reason and testing.

A later development of positivism, which started during the Age of Enlightenment, holds that no statement is meaningful unless it is capable of being verified. This "Verification Principle" as per Wittgenstein⁸ in his Tractatus Logico- Philosophicus, is a strong indicator of the scientific foundations of positivism. Positivism places great emphasis on observable facts drawn from empirical studies, both reliable and valid as well as repeatable, without any major variances in outcomes between the same scientific tests performed at different times or in different locales. A tree is a tree whether it exists now or 50 years from now, whether it grows in my back yard or in Kew Gardens in London or whether the dinosaurs munched on it 200 million years ago. There is also no need to assess whether the tree is growing in good or bad soil, in a public or private domain or whether there any factors or biases that might influence our assessment of whether the object with leaves sprouting at the top is in fact a tree. As Chua noted, "empirical reality is objective and external to the subject".

A subsequent philosopher, Sir Karl Popper⁹ added some provisos which undermined the certainty and confidence many felt in applying and relying on the scientific approach. He identified major possible flaws based on erroneous assumptions and model limitations that form the basis of any scientific enquiry. This led to his Principle of Falsification, which holds that science is a continual process of conjecture and falsification. Conjecture, because reliance on a past series of events and outcomes may well be correct for the sample selected. But the next event may not conform to the past experience and may be the outlier or exception to prove the rule. Bertrand Russell's turkey analogy made a similar point, expanding on David Hume's challenge to inductive reasoning. ¹⁰

Inherent in Popper's principle is that establishing what is is in fact a major undertaking subject to flaws and errors. Establishing what is now is already a major intellectual exercise that produces certainties that should be read or accepted with numerous caveats. Let alone the idea of positing what should be, whether currently or in future which, due to its futuristic connotations, creates yet more uncertainties in the process. Heisenberg quite well noted the "Uncertainty Principle" on the same basis, in that what we observe occurs because we want it to, because meaning resides in an object based on and as a result of the observation process.

In a similar fashion, Malthus' position on demographics, his "pseudo" scientific establishment of population numbers and the prognosis for their growth is a stark warning to an over reliance on positivistic approaches. In brief, Thomas Robert Malthus, became a reverend in Surrey in 1789 and thereafter started to note and document observations on the local populations. He did so in parallel with exchanges with Enlightenment era philosophers such as Jean Jacques Rousseau, an acquaintance of his father. This culminated in his first formal writing on population, entitled the "Essay on the Principles of Population" ¹¹which was completed and published in 1798 and claimed over population was a looming threat because "the toiling masses were on a treadmill of sex and procreation".

Malthus was in my opinion very influential to economic and accounting theories. As Charles Darwin later noted after reading Malthus "I had at last a theory by which to work".¹² Darwin went on to develop his theory of evolution and popularized the now famous dictum of "survival of the fittest". I believe this has strongly influenced later economic theories and find their echo in "profit maximization" or Chua's "utility maximization" in as much as Homo Politico- Economicus measures "survival" and the concept of the "fittest" very much in financial/economic terms. Malthus was also influential in mathematics, and his Essay was the basis for subsequent development of logistic mathematics in the early part of the 1800s. This was on the basis of his mathematical equation known as the Malthusian Growth Model, which holds that populations double every 25 years, within certain parameters. ¹³

Subsequent population dynamics have confirmed the weakness in Malthus' Growth Model, which has just one parameter and one variable. Through the use of a scientific approach it is possible to posit such an apparently cast iron model (or "Iron Cage" as Weber would have it ¹⁴) within such severe mathematical limitations and inherent weaknesses in assumptions, emphasizing Popper's Principle of Falsification. It is clear that the Green Revolution, resulting in much improved agricultural efficiencies, in tandem with changes in social conditions, industrialization and economic progress, have naturally started to limit population growth and thereby disprove Malthus's positivist theorems. It has taken fully two hundred years for this to happen. Malthus and the Malthusians have caused much grief in this period, including the misery created by the delays in setting appropriate social and working conditions for industrial workers in the 19th century during the Industrial Revolution in England, as well as the Irish Potato Famines of the 1840's.¹⁵

Similarly, positivist accounting researchers are unlikely to consider the validity and necessity of taking due care in determining what will be tomorrow, since they would base this prognosis on a pure extrapolation of a scientific is, similar to Malthus. They continue to base their research and conclusions on models that are limited by a dogmatic scientific approach and the limitations of uncritically accepted essentialist principles and "extant institutional structures"¹⁶ , such as "survival of the fittest" and Homo Economicus' exalted race to economic superiority.

From a positivist perspective then, and placing myself in the shoes of a "positivist" researcher, I would believe that accounting researchers should only focus on what is, neutrally and dispassionately, and avoid determining or attesting to what should be. This is an approach confirmed by the accounting profession's aversion to developing or attesting to forecasts and prognoses, especially under public audit circumstances, and the approach of neutrally stating what is at a certain point in time, based on historically available and verifiable "facts".

For a mainstream accountant no other reality could exist because it would not be verifiable and repeatable. The scientific model of an economic entity is predicated on parameters that are based on certain limiting assumptions, such as that economic actors act in self-interest and are only focused on maximizing profits per se. As we know from history, such a position is untenable considering the number of corporate collapses caused by a rigid and unquestioning belief in what is and has been confirmed to be so by accountants who have misstated or attested wrongly, either consciously or unconsciously, to books of accounts that subsequently are found to be the equivalent of corporate clay feet. As Chua notes, under mainstream accounting's positivism, human beings are not seen as makers of social reality. But if the reality does not concord with the model, as happens during the frequent crises that develop because of positivistic single-mindedness, we are unlikely to challenge the accepted wisdom around "extant institutional structures". (Chua, 1986). Instead, we build better models to explain what is and ignore the question of what should be.

Interpretivism

What is old age? As protests in France against the raising of the pension age showed ¹⁷, the definition of old age has wide repercussions in society, accounting and economics. According to French unions, around 2.5 - 3 million citizens marched in the streets of Paris to challenge the raising of the retirement age from 60 to 62 years old. This same age threshold features materially in financial accounts of those organizations that can still afford to maintain a functioning pension plan for their employees after the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. It also has and will continue to affect the financial well-being of nation states since the original prognoses for life expectancy made in the 1960's as part of the formation of state pension funds did not account for an inexorable rise of life expectancies and a drop in birth rates and thereby tax paying population. What is essentially a state subsidized Ponzi scheme may be in its dying days, as there are fewer marks to contribute to the money merry go round.

In this context Pearce (2010)¹⁸ , notes that the pension or retirement age was in fact set by the founder of modern Germany, Otto von Bismarck, in the 1880's. Bismarck needed an age threshold to determine when to start paying war pensions as Germany and France had just completed another round of conflicts in the 1870's. He established, through scientific enquiry, that the average life expectancy of a German ex-soldier was around 65 years of age. As Pearce notes, the age threshold so cynically selected has stuck and been adopted by other nations. As such, it has become a general and popular belief that old age is more or less determined to be from around 65 years old, even though life expectancies in some countries, such as Holland, are now in the late 80's and materially increasing over time.
It is appropriate to discuss one of the key philosophers underpinning the evolution of interpretivism at this stage, Max Weber (1864 - 1920). A fellow German, he was around 20 years old when von Bismarck came up with his proposal that the retirement age should be 65 years old. Similar to von Bismarck's pension diktat, Weber's words and thoughts would also "reweberate" throughout history. He separated the scientific approach of "Erklaeren" from the interpretive approach of "Verstehen" or understanding. In doing so he thereby expanded the task of the researcher, whether they be social or accounting, to identify, analyse and take into account a wider range of factors to understand "why".

In this way he presented an answer to Popper's Principle of Falsification by encouraging research to be conducted within a framework of wider understanding. For example, no longer should we research gravity and create models and equations, but we should go further and ask the question "why gravity" or "what forces gravity", or even what actors subject to gravity experience and believe. In doing so, the interpretive approach is much less likely to fall into a natural fallacy type of trap as positivism would, whereby the first or if not the first, the most convenient explanation is held up as the definite answer to our questions, driving all further thought and analysis from there.

Weber sees social research as being "the study of society in the context of human beings acting and interacting" and the "focus on the meanings and values of the acting persons"¹⁹. "Verstehen" is a social scientific pursuit, focused on developing self-knowledge, including the factual, opinions, determining how self- knowledge is constructed, grasping the self-understandings of actors in the social context, and mediates between context and self-understanding. As Chua sums it up "Knowledge is based on the scientific explanations of the human intentions. The adequacy of those explanations is further assessed via the criteria of logical consistency, subjective interpretation, and agreement with the actor's common-sense interpretations".²⁰

Interpretivism is considered a theoretical perspective in Crotty²¹ and excluded by some other academic researchers (Guba and Lincoln 1994) from being an epistemology, but is considered an epistemology by other authors (Chua 1996) and Borlikowski and Baroudi (1991).²² Based on my own understanding and interpretation of the term, as it "looks for culturally derived and historically situated interpretations of the social life world" it appears to me to be an epistemology that hybridizes aspects of positivism and constructionism, while staying apart from the subjectivist epistemology through its emphasis on the observer's neutrality.

Later thinkers and historical streams included, in order, hermeneutics, phenomenology and symbolic interactionism. All of these attempt to maintain a certain distance from the question or subject at hand, and aim to be detached and objective in order to establish a reality. For example, a social researcher could have asked Otto von Bismarck why he introduced the retirement age. If he had said, "this is due to my compassion towards the German Volk and the patriots of this country, in order to provide them an unencumbered old age", the social observer "must exercise sufficient discipline on himself to ensure that it is indeed the "actor's" meanings that are recorded in his notebook and not merely his own".²³ It is interesting to note that current reviews of Bismarck's first state supported pension system do not investigate the possibilities that the scheme was introduced as a way of appeasing the returned German soldiers in a rather cynical fashion. Instead, his scheme is seen as a milestone in state sponsored social security although many note it as an institutional Ponzi scheme.²⁴

In that manner, interpretivism still is very much focused on a social scientific pursuit to determine what is rather than what should be. Focus remains on the actors and their interpretations, with the researcher on the side-lines taking faithful notes and transcripts to present a picture of society and the environment as it is perceived by the others, without any critical assessment as to the actor's common sense. That said, it takes a stance that is more towards what should be, based on the interpretation of events by third parties that are observed, interviewed and prompted to provide their point of view. This assists to establish a limited social reality where facts and values are heavily influenced and subjective in as far as the personal opinion of actors can be deemed to be subjective.

At this point I briefly review hermeneutics since I grew up in the context of hermeneutics. This is due to an early start in studying Greek and Hebrew and translating the New Testament under the tutelage of a Dutch pastor. I never progressed as far as formal exegesis as my formal career in ancient languages was prematurely cut short due to emigration to New Zealand in 1981. The history of pension schemes has already been hermeneutically alluded to in terms of their history, context, and so is their social impact and our social reality, including cultural beliefs about old age.

I will now review the same topic from an accounting researcher's perspective. For, pension scheme contributions and obligations reflect assets and liabilities towards third parties and need to be accurately reflected on the balance sheet of a company. Martin Heidegger, a major proponent of hermeneutics²⁵ (known as phenomenological hermeneutics) would have noted observations on the possible arbitrariness of the 65 year cut off used to establish company liabilities towards pensioners. Based on my experience auditing the related internal controls and year end journals at a major oil company in New Zealand, I cannot in fact recall ever reviewing the assumptions used by the company actuaries to establish the actual liabilities, ie. the 65 year age limit. It is interesting to note that Heidegger later came to the conclusion that his social research approach (and my audit approach in the case of the pension audit) could possibly contain flaws by forgetting self or being (literal translation of Seinsvergessenheit). Crotty notes this means "Oblivion of Being"²⁶ . I prefer the more literal translation I have noted.

As Crotty notes, in later life and as a result of the reflections, Heidegger focused on the Event, rather than on the outcome of the Event. In that manner, as an auditor or accounting researcher I would have been much better prepared to perform my work and raise pertinent questions about the corporate age limits set as a basis for liability calculations, as was done by Jose Pinera, a Harvard PhD and a young economist in Chile in 1978.²⁷ Noted in the Brussels Journal, the efforts of Pinera created the basis from which Chile has now arguably reached a high level of social and economic development without the worries about the future viability of a system that now has to carry substantial numbers of western pensioners.

One can see in this the evolution of an individual mind, such as Heidegger's, in parallel with developments in social research. From a very scientific, factual, empirically validated, nomothetic and positivistic approach we have now moved to a much more contextual approach in interpretivism. This wants to record and consider historical connotations and the interpretations of actors (Heidegger's beings) to reach greater understanding. But it still does not quite get to a point of admitting that the observer has his or her own bias and wishes to remain on a positivist ground in that manner.

If I were an interpretivist accounting researcher therefore, I would be happy to identify what is and what should be, but only as far as the actors or documents observed relate it to me. As Gadamer intimated, "History does not belong to us. We belong to history".²⁸ And that confirms the interpretivist accounting researcher's attitude and acceptance towards the status quo. It also confirms a position between the epistemologies of objectivism and critical enquiry, somewhere in the middle of the continuum between is and should be.

How would Critical Enquiry see this statement?

The gravestone of Karl Marx (1818 - 1883) in High Gate Cemetery, London carries the following epitaph "Philosophers have only interpreted the world. The point, however, is to change it." It is a famous quote taken from Marx's Theses on Feuerbach, No XI ²⁹and sums up Marx's approach to philosophy. For, if we are to change the world, we have to have an opinion. And such an opinion is formulated through any epistemology. It will therefore, regardless of all efforts taken to remain unbiased and objective, be coloured by our upbringing, cultural heritage and baggage, history and environment. The resulting epistemology that Marx embodies is that of critical enquiry.

Critical enquiry is considered a theoretical perspective by Crotty, but one of the key epistemologies out of four by other authors, including Guba and Lincoln (1994) who list four predominant paradigms or epistemologies, positivism, post-positivism, critical theory and constructionism. Chua lists critical enquiry as one of the three epistemologies she identified in 1986 in her article.³⁰ I concur with Chua and other noted academics, that Critical Enquiry should therefore be seen as an epistemology rather than a theoretical framework.

Marx noted that the Malthusian Growth Theory was a "libel on the human race", and Malthus himself "a sycophant of the landed aristocracy, bent on building the capitalist case for the inevitability of poverty". This is not a surprise, since Malthus had a major impact on attitudes towards the poor and class structures, as exemplified during the Irish famines in the 1840's. During those years, economic and accounting based decisions were taken in the name of Malthus, whereby landed aristocracy in Ireland, mostly British, was exporting food while millions of Irish peasants were either dying or emigrating. ³¹

This is a pattern repeated each time when there is another economic crash in Ireland, including the latest statistics of around 100,000 Irish leaving annually as a result of the Global Financial Crisis and the Irish bail out crisis. Accounting for all this national and recurring misery, a noted Irish social researcher referred to a historical reality that has somehow not left the Irish, and which undermines the confidence of the average Irish citizen to this day. In some ways Malthus provided the scientific rationale and equations that created this situation, while Marx provided an explanation. Economic, political and social life is in a continuing process of transformation where power bases and relationships are in flux. Each time a social or institutional structure assumes authority, it will be challenged by another, creating friction and conflict. A result of this conflict will be a new power to be challenged anew.

Critical enquiry is about enquiry and judgment. As Chua notes, "Human intention, rationality, and agency are accepted, but this is critically analysed given a belief in false consciousness and ideology".³² Critical enquiry requires a thorough self-understanding before embarking on the path of critique because one needs to identify bias to be able to safeguard from it. Taking a similar linear historical approach as Marx, positivism begat interpretivism which begat critical enquiry. Personal bias was scientifically isolated by a process of rigorous and repeatable, verifiable testing that could be replicated by any other researcher; It led to a realization that testing axioms and hypotheses could not be done in isolation from the object and a certain progress was made towards allowing bias to be allowed in, albeit limited to the bias of the actors in context. This then resulted in a recognition and acceptance of the role and influence of bias and judgement of the observer in creating new history.

Malthus proposed his theories without recognizing his bias, applying a pseudo-scientific approach and models to the perceived problem of population and limited resources. Marx recognized his bias but was unable to isolate it sufficiently to safeguard the course of history from the extremes of revolution. Considering these two examples, accounting researchers should answer normative questions. Chua lists five pre-determinants of accounting research as an effective social critique to establish what should be.

The first is that accounting research is no longer divorced from the wider societal relationships. Had Malthus done the same, he would have understood that population dynamics cannot be defined in an equation with just one parameter and one variable. This could have avoided the deleterious repercussions felt subsequently based on a "calculus that paints a picture of the "cake" available for distribution…" ³³ with a logistically doubling of a population bent on taking a piece of the cake.

Secondly, Chua notes that critical enquiry emphasizes the totality of relationships, be it social, economic, political or ideological. If Malthus had used this approach, he would have avoided falling into a trap of being labelled a sycophant of the landed aristocracy by Marx. The same aristocracy that used their position of power to implement policies that fuelled the famine for economic purposes and ideology, policies which were designed to deal with the promiscuous Irish, the "white chimpanzees" and the missing links between the negro and the chimpanzee, as Punch would have it.

Third, the accounting profession (or any other professional body such as demographers, environmentalists, eugenicists, or even the local brass band) would realize that they are not in fact neutral but an organized interest group. This would lead to a recognition of bias and a treatment of that bias, as opposed to the approach of positivists and interpretivists for whom bias on the part of an observer does not exist.

Fourth, a holistic approach focusing on both macro and micro issues which integrates different philosophical, scientific and social streams and sub streams to ensure all cause and effect relationships are clearly placed in proper context, thereby avoiding a silo approach resulting in biased results. If Malthus had been truly focused on scientific clarity and objectivity, such an approach would have identified the dominant power relationships and economic undercurrents resulting from the predominantly English aristocracy's position as land owners in Ireland.

Lastly, Chua notes the need for a recognition and analysis of predominant essential dogmas and institutional frameworks, agencies and structures.

By using these 5 pre-determinants of critical enquiry, a critical accounting researcher would confirm the need for an accounting researcher to address the normative question of what should be.

Conclusion

The decision to use an apparently unrelated book on demographics as a reference work for this essay was done deliberately to emphasize the need for broader and a more holistic understanding in accounting and the accounting profession. The racial quotes and caricatures used in some cases are quaint and clearly outmoded but were apparently uncritically accepted at the time. They were used as an excuse for the mass death of millions of people, a fact that Queen Elizabeth II recently took a small step towards apologizing for during her visit to Ireland. As I wrote I imagine the laird's accountants in County Cork, neutrally counting the additional acreage that became available as more of the tenants left for better pastures.

Additionally, I am continuing on a critical enquiry of my own which is as much hermeneutically driven, to establish what exactly caused us to get to this point in human development and evolution. This is a private journey and I believe most, if not all the answers, are to be found in history. I noted in one of my earliest journals for the course that I preferred Critical Enquiry out of the three dominant modernist epistemologies identified and analyzed by Chua. As the course has progressed I am much confirmed in that very early choice.

Fortunately, demographics assessed from a critical perspective also offer some positive prognoses. Not least the fact that there is an rapidly reducing demand for slices of the resource cake in some parts of the world, indicating that neo classical economic theory may eventually be its own undoing economically. The resultant reduction in pressure may well lead to other paradigms beyond the traditional. It may not be necessary to hang the last capitalist with the rope sold by the second to last, as Marx would have it. And I learnt something interesting about societal beliefs related to old age, confirming my own developing thoughts and the direction I wish to take in the next 50 years. Pearce (2010) comes to similar interesting conclusions in the final chapters of his book. There is hope yet.

1. Pearce, F. (2011) People Quake. Mass Migration, Ageing Nations and the Coming Population Crash, Transworld Publishers, ISBN 9781905811397.
2. Crotty, M. (1998), The Foundations of Social Research. Allan & Unwin, ISBN 978 1 86448 604 9
   
3. Chua, W.F. (1986), Radical Developments in Accounting Thought, The Accounting Review, Vol. LXI, No. 4, October 1986.
   
4. Malthus, T.R., An Essay On The Principle Of Population (1798 1st edition) with A Summary View (1830), and Introduction by Professor Flew, A. Penguin Classics. ISBN 0-14-043206-X
5. Chua, W.F. p. 611, Ibid
   
6. Chua, W F. Ibid
   
7. Crotty p. 8 Ibid
   
8. Crotty p. 24 Ibid
9. Crotty, p.31 Ibid
   
10. http://science.jrank.org/pages/22551/necessity-nomic.html
    
11. Pearce, F. p. 12 Ibid
    
12. Pearce F. p 17 Ibid
    
13. http://www.stolaf.edu/people/mckelvey/envision.dir/malthus.html
    
14. Weber, M. translated by Talcott Parsons (2003)". The Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism, p.181, ISBN 0-486-42703-X Taken from the quote: "But fate decreed that the cloak should become an iron cage"
    
15. Pearce, F. p 25 Ibid
    
16. Chua, p. 611 Ibid
17. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11559265
    
18. Pearce, F. p. 286 Ibid
    
19. Crotty, p. 69 Ibid
20. Chua, p. 615. Ibid
    
21. Crotty p.5 Ibid
    
22. http://www.qual.auckland.ac.nz/
    
23. Crotty, p. 75 Referring to Mitchell. Ibid
    
24. http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/3258
    
25. Crotty p.95 Ibid
    
26. Crotty, p.100 Ibid
    
27. http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/3258
    
28. Crotty, p 103 Ibid
    
29. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/theses.htm
    
30. Chua (1986), Ibid
    
31. Pearce F. p. 26. Ibid Ireland continued to be the biggest exporter of England's food supplies throughout the famine.
    
32. Chua, p.622. Ibid
    
33. Chua, p.623 Ibid
    

Bibliography

1. Chua, W.F. (1986), Radical Developments in Accounting Thought, The Accounting Review, Vol. LXI, No. 4, October 1986.

2. Crotty, M. (1998), The Foundations of Social Research. Allan & Unwin, ISBN 978 1 86448 604 9.

3. Fraser, C. (2010) France hit by new wave of mass pension protests. BBC World News, 16 October 2010. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11559265

4. Malthus, T.R., An Essay On The Principle Of Population (1798 1st edition) with A Summary View (1830), and Introduction by Professor Flew, A. Penguin Classics. ISBN 0-14-043206-X

5. McKelvey, S. (1995), Malthusian Growth Model, Department of Mathematics, Saint Olaf College, Northfield, Minnesota 55057. http://www.stolaf.edu/people/mckelvey/envision.dir/malthus.html

6. Marx, K. (1845), Theses on Feuerbach, As an appendix to Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy in 1888, Progress Publishers, Moscow, USSR, 1969, available on http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/theses.htm

7. Myers, M.D. (1997), Qualitative Research in Information Systems. Association for Information Systems. Web page as at 17 February 2011. http://www.qual.auckland.ac.nz/

8. Pearce, F. (2011) People Quake. Mass Migration, Ageing Nations and the Coming Population Crash, Transworld Publishers, ISBN 9781905811397

9. Weber, M. translated by Talcott Parsons (2003). The Protestant Ethic and the spirit of capitalism, p.181, ISBN 0-486-42703-X