From Conspiracy Theories in the Incipient New World Order of the 1990s to Regimes of Transparency Now

Marcus, George E.; Powell, Michael G.

doi:10.1353/anq.2003.0027

Cited by 8 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…26. For other critical treatments of transparency, see Hasty 2005, Marcus and Powell 2003, Morris 2004, and West and Sanders 2003 With the waning of post-Cold War euphoria over NGOs as emblems of "civil society" (Fisher 1997), some critics have argued that NGOs must address their "accountability deficit" by instituting more free market mechanisms and working with corporations (Kovach et al 2003;SustainAbility 2003). The American Enterprise Institute, a 170 conservative Washington think tank, imposes "transparency" on select NGOs with a Web site monitoring their activities and displaying their 990 tax statements and annual revenues (see www.aei.org; www.ngowatch.org; also Stecklow 2006).…”

Section: In 2002 Male Village Leaders and Youth Living Near A Transnmentioning

confidence: 99%

“… 26. For other critical treatments of transparency, see Hasty 2005, Marcus and Powell 2003, Morris 2004, and West and Sanders 2003. With the waning of post–Cold War euphoria over NGOs as emblems of “civil society” (Fisher 1997), some critics have argued that NGOs must address their “accountability deficit” by instituting more free market mechanisms and working with corporations (Kovach et al 2003; SustainAbility 2003).…”

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confidence: 99%

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“CORPORATE SECURITY BEGINS IN THE COMMUNITY”: Mining, the Corporate Social Responsibility Industry, and Environmental Advocacy in Indonesia

Welker

2009

Cultural Anthropology

223

126

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In 2002, male village leaders and youth living near a transnational mining corporation's operation in rural Indonesia attacked a group of visiting environmental activists. I analyze the moral commitments of the corporate managers who provoked the attack and the village elites who organized and executed it, turning to the context of the burgeoning Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) industry to grasp the broader dimensions of the beliefs and practices through which managers and elites legitimized their actions. This essay shows that the CSR industry is coevolving alongside environmental advocacy campaigns and grassroots corporate security models.

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Section: In 2002 Male Village Leaders and Youth Living Near A Transnmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“CORPORATE SECURITY BEGINS IN THE COMMUNITY”: Mining, the Corporate Social Responsibility Industry, and Environmental Advocacy in Indonesia

Welker

2009

Cultural Anthropology

223

126

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“…If given unfettered access to the information economy, ICT4D—exemplified by Hersman's comments—presumes, individual citizens can both lift themselves out of poverty and throw off the shackles of dictatorial regimes (Hetherington , 242). Instead of tackling inequality, it produces “individualistic, market friendly, and measurable entities” (Ballestero S. , 160) and has thus been described as the ethical alibi of neoliberal governance (Marcus and Powell ; West and Sanders ; Mahmud ). Such criticism is helpful in exposing transparency and its attendant projects as ideologies.…”

Section: Transparency Technology and Expertisementioning

confidence: 99%

Seeing (from) Digital Peripheries: Technology and Transparency in Kenya’s Silicon Savannah

Poggiali

2016

Cult. Anthropol.

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The equipment-free aspect of reality here has become the height of artifice; the sight of immediate reality has become an orchid in the land of technology." -Walter Benjamin "We don't map those," Kyale stated emphatically, gesturing to the spigot jutting out of a makeshift mud structure from which women were collecting water in plastic jerry cans. His GPS unit dangled from a cord wrapped around his wrist, and it swayed in step with his measured gait as we passed by the water point. A flicker of confusion must have swept across my face, and Kyale leaned over and whispered to me: "That water point is not by the government, but by the community. It's illegal, so we don't map it." It was nearing the second hour of our data collection expedition in Kyale's neighborhood, an informal settlement of Nairobi, Kenya, that I will call Muhimu. A few moments later, Kyale paused in front of a different water point-this one with a Nairobi City Water and Sewage Company (NCWSC) meter attached-and recorded its latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates with his GPS device. Later, taking respite from the heat of the day, he would retreat indoors to upload these coordinates to a computer using the software platform Java OpenStreetMap Editor (JOSM). By aggregating his data with those collected by other volunteer mappers over the span of a few

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“…As experienced by the Cofán, the discourse of transparency is fundamentally obstructive. Similar to other actors embedded in environmental and development networks, Cofán activists have learned to be skeptical of the idea of transparency, as well as the interventions it frames (Hetherington 2011;Marcus & Powell 2003;Mathews 2011). Neither an expression of pre-existing perspectives nor an instrumentally useful tool, this configuration functions as a stifling political impediment.…”

Section: Transparencymentioning

confidence: 99%

Strange powers: Conservation, science, and transparency in an indigenous political project (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

Cepek

2012

Anthropology Today

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The Cofán people of Amazonian Ecuador are important players within global movements for indigenous rights and biodiversity conservation. Scholars, non‐governmental organizations, and donor agencies laud their efforts to protect more than 430,000 hectares of forestland from an expanding colonization front, the transnational petroleum industry, and the spillover of violence from the Colombian civil war and drug trade. In this article, I examine how a set of discourses surrounding indigenous politics enable and constrain Cofán projects. In the context of an ethnographic account of Cofán political practice, I differentiate between the ‘expressive’, ‘instrumental’, and ‘obstructive’ nature of ‘conservation’, ‘science’, and ‘transparency’, respectively. More specifically, I develop three arguments: first, that the discourse of conservation serves to express deeply held conceptions of the ties between Cofán culture, Cofán territory, and Cofán politics; second, that the discourse of science functions as an instrument that Cofán activists use to ground a political‐economic exchange with outside powers; and third, that the discourse of transparency stymies Cofán collective action and is neither locally meaningful nor politically useful. By analyzing the social life of these terms and concepts in Cofán activism, I argue for a more nuanced understanding of discursive power, which always exists in tension with the cultural sensibilities and political perspectives that it supposedly transforms.

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From Conspiracy Theories in the Incipient New World Order of the 1990s to Regimes of Transparency Now

Cited by 8 publications

References 11 publications

“CORPORATE SECURITY BEGINS IN THE COMMUNITY”: Mining, the Corporate Social Responsibility Industry, and Environmental Advocacy in Indonesia

“CORPORATE SECURITY BEGINS IN THE COMMUNITY”: Mining, the Corporate Social Responsibility Industry, and Environmental Advocacy in Indonesia

Seeing (from) Digital Peripheries: Technology and Transparency in Kenya’s Silicon Savannah

Strange powers: Conservation, science, and transparency in an indigenous political project (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

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