- About
- Convenors
- Programme 2016-17
About
A new Research Group on the Politics and Paradoxes of Transparency will launch at CRASSH in 2016-17, run by Ella McPherson (Sociology) and Alfred Moore (CRASSH). The group will explore the ambivalent effects of ideals and technologies of transparency. Transparency is commonly assumed to be a good thing to which regimes, organisations, and even people should aspire. Yet it is also widely recognised that transparency can be corrosive. It seems to be both a cure for and a cause of distrust. It has been associated with ways of taming bureaucracy that themselves generate more bureaucracy. It promises immediacy in personal relations yet can generate distance. Transparency for some can create obscurity for others. Transparency is a complex conceptual compound, a response to very different problems of corruption, limited knowledge, political exclusion and governance in complex environments, each of which invokes distinct and often conflicting political goods.
While it is common to talk of new technologies heralding an ‘age of transparency’, in this research group we want to focus on particular examples of how technologies accelerate, mediate, and co-produce ideals and practices of transparency in three different areas: (i) the public sphere and the production of public knowledge, (ii) political economy and the relations between individuals and commercial actors, and (iii) the reordering of personal relations. We will ask how technologies of transparency reproduce and reorder relations of power, and how opening up institutions and practices can at the same time introduce new patterns of closure and seclusion. In each of these areas we will bring a multi-disciplinary focus on concrete examples, with the aim of developing a more precise set of research questions around the politics and paradoxes of transparency.
The format will consist of a closed reading group, which will meet twice a term to discuss the texts of authors invited from across disciplines, as well as a one open lecture per term. Please register your interest below to receive further information on joining the reading group as well as on the lecture schedule.
Please join the mailing list here to receive further information on joining the reading group as well as on the lecture schedule.
Administrative assistant: gradfac@crassh.cam.ac.uk
Convenors
Convenors
Dr Ella McPherson (Lecturer in the Sociology of New Media and Digital Technology, Department of Sociology)
Dr Alfred Moore (Research Fellow, CRASSH)
Dr Olivier Driessens (Department of Sociology) FI
Faculty Advisors
Professor John Naughton (Senior Research Fellow, CRASSH, Director, Press Fellowship Programme Wolfson College)
Programme 2016-17
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The Origins and Effects of the UK Freedom of Information Act. 26 Oct 2016 12:00pm - 2:00pm, Seminar room SG2, Alison Richard Building. Benjamin Worthy (Birkbeck), Public Lecture [Online Registration]-at The Politics and Paradoxes of Transparency |
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Accountability and the State in the Age of Technology 9 Nov 2016 2:00pm - 4:00pm, Erasmus Room at Queens' College, Silver Street, Cambridge CB3 9ET [*NB Different venue and time today] Graham Denyer Willis (Cambridge), Ernesto Schwartz-Marin (Durham) at 2pm only today [Online Registration]- At The Politics and Paradoxes of Transparency |
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Fact-checking and the Production of Political Knowledge 23 Nov 2016 12:00pm - 2:00pm, Seminar room SG2, Alison Richard Building Tanya Filer (Cambridge), Jason Reifler (Exeter) [Online Registration] -at The Politics and Paradoxes of Transparency |
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Algorithmic Accountability 16 Jan 2017 12:00pm - 6:30pm, Venue and time tbc – Joint session, Ethics of Big Data and Politics & Paradoxes of T |
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Cancelled:Politics of Personalised Insurance Pricing in the Age of Wearable Devices: Big Data… 8 Feb 2017 12:00pm - 2:00pm, Seminar room SG2, Alison Richard Building Liz McFall (Open University), Dan Wilson (Cambridge)- at Politics & Paradoxes of Transparency |
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Crowdsourcing Corporate Transparency 22 Feb 2017 12:00pm - 2:00pm, Seminar room SG2, Alison Richard Building. Richard Mills (Cambridge), Milena Marin (Amnesty) -at Politics & Paradoxes of Transparency |
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Technology, Transparency, and Policing 8 Mar 2017 12:00pm - 2:00pm, Seminar room SG2, Alison Richard Building Barak Ariel (Cambridge), Adam Edwards (University of Cardiff)-at Politics & Paradoxes of Transparency |
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‘Transparency’ From Transgression to Common Sense -With Notes on the Role of Technology 10 Mar 2017 12:00pm - 2:00pm, Seminar room B4. Institute of Criminology, Sidgwick Ave. NB Change of venue and time* Public Lecture, Michael Schudson (Columbia)-at Politics & Paradoxes of Transparency. Online registration required. |
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…The Challenges of Transparency in the Digital Age (Workshop) 23 Mar 2017 11:30am - 3:30pm, Room S1, 1st floor, Alison Richard Building Joint Workshop. Ethics of Big Data and Pol & Paradoxes of Transparency. Limited places. Online Registration required. |
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Cultural History of Transparency 3 May 2017 12:00pm - 2:00pm, Seminar Room SG2, Alison Richard Building Reading Group at The Politics and Paradoxes of Transparency |
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Wearables and the Quantified Self: Transparency, Big Data and Solidarity 17 May 2017 12:00pm - 2:00pm, Seminar Room SG2, Alison Richard Building Reading Group at The Politics and Paradoxes of Transparency |
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Organizational Transparency: Practices, Governance and Trust 31 May 2017 12:00pm - 2:00pm, Seminar Room SG2, Alison Richard Building *NB different date Reading Group at The Politics and Paradoxes of Transparency |
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Breaking Aleppo: The Facts and Figures of the Conflict 13 Jun 2017 12:00pm - 1:30pm, S2, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road Part of the Politics and Paradoxes of Transparency Research Group series. |
