1st Edition

Cultures of Transparency Between Promise and Peril

    242 Pages 6 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    242 Pages 6 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    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.

    1. Introduction: Transparency and Society

    Stefan Berger and Susanne Fengler

    Part 1: Transparency as Ethics and Politics

    2. Transparency in Public Affairs: The Doctrinal Roots of a Successful Political Metaphor

    Sandrine Baume

    3. Transparency, the Public Sphere, and the Privatisation of Human Interests

    Thomas Docherty

    Part 2: Economics and Transparency

    4. Varieties of Transparency as Analytical Tool

    David Heald

    5. Transparency and Economic Development

    Jens Forssbaeck

    Part 3: Law and Transparency

    6. Transparency and its Limits

    Padideh Ala’i

    7. Political Economy of Judicial Data: Transparency, Openness and Access to Records of War Crimes Prosecutions

    Elma Demir

    Part 4: Transparency and the Digital World

    8. Transparency and the Rise of Populism

    Mark Fenster

    9. Whistleblowers, Media, and Democracy in Latin America

    Rogério Christofoletti

    Part 5: Trust and Transparency

    10. The Two Faces of Transparency? How Much Transparency is Beneficial? How Much is too Much?

    Stefan Hornbostel

    11. Does Transparency Endanger Trust?

    Michael Hartmann

    Part 6: Transparency and Subjectivities

    12. Stainless Subjects: Transparency Imaginaries of the Avantgardes

    Vincent Kaufmann

    13. Anonymity and Transparency: Reconfiguring Cultural Modes of Social Interaction

    Nils Zurawski, Michi Knecht and Daniela Silvestrin

    14. Transparency, Privacy, and Civil Inattention

    Emmanuel Alloa

    15. Conclusion

    Stefan Berger and Susanne Fengler

    Biography

    Stefan Berger is Professor of Social History and Director of the Institute for Social Movements at Ruhr University Bochum, Germany. He is the co-editor of Contested Transparencies, Social Movements and the Public Sphere: Multi-Disciplinary Perspectives and The History of Social Movements in Global Perspective.

    Susanne Fengler is Professor of International Journalism and Director of the Erich Brost Institute for International Journalism at TU Dortmund University. She is the co-editor of Journalists and Media Accountability, Mapping Media Accountability in Europe and Beyond, and the European Handbook of Media Accountability.

    Dimitrij Owetschkin is a Permanent Research Fellow at the Institute for Social Movements at Ruhr University Bochum, Germany. He is the co-editor of Contested Transparencies, Social Movements and the Public Sphere: Multi-Disciplinary Perspectives.

    Julia Sittmann is Research Associate at the Institute for Social Movements at Ruhr University Bochum, and a writer and editor at Deutsche Welle Akademie, Germany.