Full Description
This volume addresses the major questions surrounding a concept that has become ubiquitous in the media and in civil society as well as in political and economic discourses in recent years, and which is demanded with increasing frequency: transparency.
How can society deal with increasing and often diverging demands and expectations of transparency? What role can different political and civil society actors play in processes of producing, or preventing, transparency? Where are the limits of transparency and how are these boundaries negotiated? What is the relationship of transparency to processes of social change, as well as systems of social surveillance and control? Engaging with transparency as an interrelated product of law, politics, economics and culture, this interdisciplinary volume explores the ambiguities and contradictions, as well as the social and political dilemmas, that the age of transparency has unleashed.
As such it will appeal to researchers across the social sciences and humanities with interests in politics, history, sociology, civil society, citizenship, public policy, criminology and law.
Contents
Cultures of Transparency in a Changing World - an Introduction
Dimitrij Owetschkin, Julia Sittmann, Stefan Berger
Part I: Transparency and Public Policy - Historical and Methodological Perspectives
Transparency in Public Affairs: The Rise of a Successful Political Metaphor
Sandrine Baume
Transparency and Economic Development
Jens Forssbaeck
Part II: Transparency in the Digital Age
Bullets of Truth: Julian Assange and the Politics of Transparency
Mark Fenster
Whistleblowers, Media, and Democracy in Latin America
Rogério Christofoletti
Blind Spots: Shedding Light on Media Transparency Research Across the World
Susanne Fengler, Dominik Speck, Mariella Bastian and Judith Pies
Part III: The Limits of Informational Openness
Does Transparency Endanger Trust? Reflections on a Delicate Relationship
Martin Hartmann
Can Transparency be a Sin? On the Advantages and Obstacles of the New Silver Bullet in Academic Research
Stefan Hornbostel
The Limits of Transparency: China, the United States and the World Trade Organization
Padideh Ala'i & Katayoon Beshkardana
Part IV: Transparency and the Individual - The "End of Privacy"
Transparency and Privatisation
Thomas Docherty
Transparency, Privacy, and Civil Inattention
Emmanuel Alloa
Part V: Towards a "Transparent Society"?
Stainless Subjects: Transparency Imaginaries of the Avantgardes
Vincent Kaufman
The Idea of the Public Sphere and Social Movements as Agents of Transparency: Historical Perspectives
Stefan Berger and Dimitrij Owetschkin
