Editing Transparency (behavior) (section)

==Criticism==

[[Sigmund Freud]], following [[Friedrich Nietzsche]] ("On Truth and Lie in a Nonmoral Sense"), regularly argues that transparency is impossible because of the occluding function of the unconscious.

Among philosophical and literary works that have examined the idea of transparency are [[Michel Foucault]]'s ''[[Discipline and Punish]]'' or [[David Brin]]'s ''[[The Transparent Society]]''. The German philosopher and media theorist [[Byung-Chul Han]], in his 2012 work ''Transparenzgesellschaft'', sees transparency as a cultural norm created by neoliberal market forces, which he understands as the insatiable drive toward voluntary disclosure bordering on the pornographic. According to Han, the dictates of transparency enforce a totalitarian system of openness at the expense of other social values such as [[shame]], [[secrecy]], and [[trust (social science)|trust]]. He was criticized for his concepts, as they would suggest corrupt politics, and for referring to the anti-democratic [[Carl Schmitt]].<ref>{{cite news|title=Klarheit schaffen|url=http://www.freitag.de/kultur/1223-klarheit-schaffen|work=der Freitag | language = de |date=7 June 2012 |access-date= 3 July 2012 |last1=Kraft |first1=Steffen }}</ref>

Anthropologists have long explored ethnographically the relation between revealed and concealed knowledges, and have increasingly taken up the topic in relation to accountability, transparency and conspiracy theories and practices today.<ref>Strathern, M. 2000. Audit Cultures: Anthropological Studies in Accountability, Ethics and the Academy. London: Routledge.</ref><ref>Hetherington, K. 2011. Guerrilla Auditors: The Politics of Transparency in Neoliberal Paraguay. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.</ref><ref>{{cite journal|title=ReadCube for Researchers|website=Readcube.com|volume=35|issue=2|pages=160–166|doi=10.1111/j.1555-2934.2012.01196.x|year = 2012|last1 = Ballestero s|first1 = Andrea|hdl=1911/79642|url=https://scholarship.rice.edu/bitstream/1911/79642/3/TransparencyinTriads.pdf|hdl-access=free}}</ref> Todd Sanders and Harry West, for example, suggest not only that realms of the revealed and concealed require each other, but also that transparency in practice produces the very opacities it claims to obviate.<ref>Sanders, Todd & Harry G. West 2003. Powers revealed and concealed in the New World Order. In H. G. West & T. Sanders (eds) Transparency and Conspiracy: Ethnographies of Suspicion in the New World Order. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, p. 16.</ref>

Clare Birchall, Christina Gaarsten, Mikkel Flyverbom, Emmanuel Alloa and Mark Fenster, among others, write in the vein of "critical transparency studies", which attempts to challenge particular orthodoxies concerning transparency. In an article, Birchall assessed "whether the ascendance of transparency as an ideal limits political thinking, particularly for western socialists and radicals struggling to seize opportunities for change". She argues that the promotion of "datapreneurial" activity through open data initiatives outsources and interrupts the political contract between governed and government. She is concerned that the dominant model of governmental data-driven transparency produces neoliberal subjectivities that reduce the possibility of politics as an arena of dissent between real alternatives. She suggests that the radical left might want to work with and reinvent secrecy as an alternative to neoliberal transparency.<ref>{{Cite journal | last = Birchall | first = Clare | title = Transparency interrupted: secrets of the left | journal = [[Theory, Culture & Society]] | volume = 28 | issue = 7–8 | pages = 60–84 | doi = 10.1177/0263276411423040 | date = December 2011 | s2cid = 144862855 }}</ref>

Researchers at the [[University of Oxford]] and [[Warwick Business School]] found that transparency can also have significant unintended consequences in the field of medical care. Gerry McGivern<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://warwick.academia.edu/GerryMcGivern|title=Gerry McGivern &#124; University of Warwick - Academia.edu|website=warwick.academia.edu}}</ref> and Michael D Fischer<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://oxford.academia.edu/MichaelFischer|title=Michael D Fischer &#124; University of Oxford - Academia.edu|website=oxford.academia.edu}}</ref> found "media spectacles" and transparent regulation combined to create "spectacular transparency" which has some perverse effects on doctors' practice and increased defensive behaviour in doctors and their staff.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=McGivern|first1=Gerry |last2=Fischer|first2=Michael D. |title=Medical regulation, spectacular transparency and the blame business|journal=Journal of Health Organization and Management |year=2010|volume=24|issue=6|pages=597–610 |pmid=21155435 |doi=10.1108/14777261011088683}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|last1=McGivern|first1=Gerry |last2=Fischer|first2=Michael D. |title=Reactivity and reactions to regulatory transparency in medicine, psychotherapy and counselling|journal=[[Social Science & Medicine]]|date=1 February 2012|volume=74|issue=3|pages=289–296 |doi=10.1016/j.socscimed.2011.09.035|pmid=22104085|url=http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/45260/1/WRAP_McGivern_McGivern__Fischer_SSM_2012_Reactivity__Reactions_to_Regulatory_Transparency_in_Medicine_Psychotherapy__Counselling_%28Authors%27_version%29.pdf}}</ref> Similarly, in a four-year organizational study, Fischer and Ferlie found that transparency in the context of a clinical risk management can act perversely to undermine ethical behavior, leading to organizational crisis and even collapse.<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Fischer|first1=Michael D. | last2 = Ferlie | first2 = Ewan |title=Resisting hybridization between modes of clinical risk management: Contradiction, contest, and the production of intractable conflict|journal=[[Accounting, Organizations and Society]] |date=1 January 2013|volume=38|issue=1|pages=30–49 |doi=10.1016/j.aos.2012.11.002|s2cid=44146410 |url=https://researchbank.acu.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1701&context=flb_pub }}</ref>