The Tyranny of Transparency

TLDR

Transparency is often promoted as a means of accountability, yet the act of making the invisible visible can have a tyrannical effect in social contexts. The study examines how the pursuit of transparency in higher education research and teaching can be understood without merely increasing visibility and information.

Abstract

ABSTRACT 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.