Surviving in an age of transparency: Emancipatory transparency‐making in food governance in Italy

Abstract

AbstractThe concept of transparency is now an unescapable reference in public, professional, and private life. As transparency‐making has recently transmuted from a progressive instrument to counter corruption into a new universal ideological formation, it is time to problematize the concept of transparency and its uses. In this article, I consider transparency not as a moral principle or static ideology but as a terrain of political struggle over its meaning and practices. An emerging literature in anthropology highlights how transparency has become a form of governance that leads to a sense of deprofessionalization in working life. Based on ethnographic research with activist networks and small‐scale farmers in Italy, I investigate experiments with horizontal and inclusive forms of alternative transparency‐making in food processing. I consider three interrelated emblematic frictions within these experiments: informal versus formal, top‐down versus horizontal, and not‐for‐profit versus commercial. While these experimental forms of transparency‐making allow small‐scale farmers to reappropriate a sense of autonomy and professionalism, the frictions indicate that conventional and alternative transparency‐making are not diametrically opposed. Frictions in emancipatory transparency‐making repoliticize decision‐making processes in ways that are unknown in contemporary concepts of transparency. Ultimately, the concept of emancipatory transparency‐making calls for engagement in open dialogical processes.