The relationship between accounting and spatial practices in the factory

Abstract During the eighteenth century, tobacco production in the Royal Tobacco Factory (RTF) of Spain moved from the San Pedro Factory located in downtown Seville to the purpose built New Factories outside the city walls. This paper examines the relationship between accounting practices and spatial practices in these two radically different factory premises. The paper explores how the intervention of detailed accounting calculations into spatial configurations and the intertwining of accounting and spatial practices provide discipline in the factory by yielding calculable spaces and accountable subjects. The spaces produced by architects in the New Factories were subsequently mediated through administrative arrangements that rendered enclosure and partitioning more disciplinary. Moreover, accounting practices were developed as a coding system to reconfigure factory space by classifying it into cost centres, quantifying activities carried out in these cost centres, and rendering spaces visible and subjects accountable. In this context, we argue that accounting practices have the capacity to function as time–space ordering devices, and, through networking with spatial practices, provide the scope for managers/administrators to enhance employee surveillance and overall factory discipline.