This book argues that transparency is a concept that has gained increasing currency and favour as an organizing principle and administrative goal in recent years. Calls for transparency have been directed towards states, markets, corporations and national political processes as well as towards large institutions such as the European Union. Focusing on empirically rich case studies, the contributors explore the ideas and practices of transparency in different contexts, encouraging a discussion of the many facets of the term and its strengths, ambiguities and limitations. They aim to shed light on the powerful global discourse and practices contained in the concept, and to fill a gap in the literature since few attempts have, until now, been made to examine the actual content and practice of transparency.Also discussed are the complex negotiations through which it is determined what should be displayed and what should remain hidden, the uses of power and control, and the processes through which transparency is, or is not, achieved. This analysis of the concepts, models and metaphors that guide and shape organizational, social and aesthetical practices today will provide a much-needed contribution to the literature for academics, researchers and students focusing on these areas.
List of figures and tables
Introduction examining the politics of transparency by Christina Carsten and Monica Lindh de Montoya 1
Pt. I Transparency and Utopia: Visibility, Truth, Future
1 Truth in 3D: displaying historical evidence at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum by Bodil Birkebaek Olesen 25
2 Practices of transparency: exporting Swedish business culture to the Baltic states by Anja Timm 42
3 The social life of brands: on choosing values for visions (and divisions) by Raoul Galli 59
4 The naked corporation: visualization, veiling and the ethico-politics of organizational transparency by Christina Garsten and Monica Lindh de Montoya 79
Pt. II Transparency and Regulation: Negotiation, Ideals, Compromises
5 Economies through transparency by Emiliano Crossman and Emilio Luque and Fabian Muniesa 97
6 Transparency, democracy and the SEC: seventy years of securities market regulation by Christopher Yenkey 122
7 Transparency at work: the production of indicators for EU employment policy by Renita Thedvall 143
8 '...What gets measured gets managed!' Sorting out 'the social' in socially responsible investing (SRI) by Anna Hasselstrom 160
9 Transparency through labelling? Layers of visibility in environmental risk management by Mikael Klintman and Magnus Bostrom 178
Pt. III Transparency and the Public: Participation, Exclusion, Ambivalence
10 Transparency and participation: partnership and hierarchies in British urban regeneration by Simone Abram 201
11 A traumatizing transparency exercise on mobile phones and health risks by Linda Soneryd 223
12 Promoting transparency, preventing war: neoliberalism, conflict preventionism and the new military by Mattias Viktorin 241
13 Transparency as tool and weapon: the case of the Venezuelan presidential recall referendum by Miguel Montoya
