CfP: Online journal Re-public, Contested transparencies

Online journal *Re-public* http://www.re-public.gr/en invites contributions for its upcoming special issue titled "Contested transparencies". Transparency has been heralded as a necessary tool for democratic government: openness, visibility, scrutiny, and oversight would render governments less corrupt and accountable to their citizens, who in turn would be able to exercise democratic control over the former. In spite of the current global trend that transparency enjoys and the relative success of the implementation of relevant projects in several counties, transparency is increasingly challenged in the public sphere by voices of mistrust and criticism. Conservative critiques claim that the full disclosure of information weakens the authority of the state; realist critiques point to the gap between professed transparency goals and the actual outcomes of transparency projects; radical critiques argue that transparency has become an increasingly de-politicised technical process, where public participation has inconsequential political effects.

The global impact of the wikileaks affair rendered this discussion even more topical. Not only did it bring to the fore the limits of transparency for all camps involved but it also re-frames the debate regarding its political role, the ways in which it is implemented and the contested discrepancies between the discourse on transparency and the operation of current political
regimes, liberal and authoritarian alike.

It is against this backdrop that we launch this call for papers. Our goal is to critically engage with the repercussions of the concept of transparency and its operationalisation, as well as with its underlying assumptions, without mythologizing nor vilifying it.

Relevant submissions could concern the following topics:

* The problematics regarding the implementation and instrumentalisation of transparency, e.g. in politics, corporate governance, public administration, and so on;

* The debate on the different models or approaches to the concept of transparency (eg. bottom-up vs. top-down, radical transparency, etc);

* The cultural and racialized assumptions underlying the discourse on transparency and how they are negotiated and debated in different contexts;

* The nexus between transparency and biopolitics. How does the discourse on transparency relate to regimes of biopolitical control;

* The wikileaks affair and its implications for the transparency debate;

* Transparency, privacy, data protection and the securitisation of everyday life;

* The linkages between the discourse on transparency and the standardisation and the quantification of social, economic and political life.

Essays should be approximately *1,500 - 1,800 words*.

Please send your contributions in electronic format to:

e-mail: editors@re-public.gr

Deadline for submissions: *31 March 2011*

More information can be found at: http://www.re-public.gr/en/?p=3859


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