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The Tyranny of Transparency
Author(s) -
Strathern Marilyn
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
british educational research journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.171
H-Index - 89
eISSN - 1469-3518
pISSN - 0141-1926
DOI - 10.1080/713651562
Subject(s) - transparency (behavior) , accountability , appeal , visibility , nothing , sociology , audit , political science , law , public relations , law and economics , epistemology , business , accounting , philosophy , physics , optics
What might an academic and a social anthropologist have to say about ‘making the invisible visible’? Taking its title from a paper by Tsoukas (‘The Tyranny of Light’), the result is a short excursus into the social world of accountability. Techniques for assessing, auditing and evaluating institutions are often defended on the grounds of transparency. What is interesting about this case is that in a social world where people are conscious of diverse interests, such an appeal to a benevolent or moral visibility is all too easily shown to have a tyrannous side—there is nothing innocent about making the invisible visible. How are we to understand such deliberate striving for transparency when it is applied, for instance, to research and teaching in higher education? This experimental account tries to avoid simply adding more visibility and more information.