The Concept of Transparency in International Relations: towards a critical approach

Transparency is an important concept in International Relations. The possibility of realizing transparency in practice operates as a central analytical axis defining distinct positions on core theoretical problems within the field, from the security dilemma to the function of international institutions and beyond. As a political practice the pursuit of transparent governance is a dominant feature of global politics, promoted by a wide range of actors across a vast range of issue areas, from nuclear proliferation to Internet governance to the politics of foreign aid. Yet, despite its importance, precisely what transparency means or how the concept is understood is frequently ill-defined by academics and policy-makers alike. As a result, the epistemological and ontological underpinnings of approaches to transparency in IR often sit in tension with their wider theoretical commitments. This article will examine the three primary understandings of transparency used in IR in order to unpack these commitments. It finds that while transparency is often explicitly conceptualized as a property of information, particularly within rationalist scholarship, this understanding rests upon an unarticulated set of sociological assumptions. This analysis suggests that conceptualizing ‘transparency-as-information’ without a wider sociology of knowledge production is highly problematic, potentially obscuring our ability to recognize transparent practices in global governance. Understanding transparency as dialogue, as a social practice rooted in shared cognitive capacities and epistemic frameworks, provides a firmer analytical ground from which to examine transparency in International Relations.

Understanding how sporting characteristics and behaviours influence destination selection: a grounded theory study of golf tourism

Sports tourism has received growing attention in academic research over the past two decades (Weed and Bull, 2009, Gibson, 2005) but greater understanding of the consumer is needed, particularly the factors influencing decisions to include sport as part of a leisure trip. This paper provides, through a focus on the sport of golf, insight into the characteristics of the sports tourist and how sports tourist behaviours influence the selection of locations deemed suitable for sports participation. This qualitative research employs a grounded theory methodology, underpinned by a constructivist epistemology, to evaluate twenty-six in-depth interviews with golf tourists. The findings propose a model which explains the relationship between golf tourist behaviours and destination selection. This identifies six strands which determine the relationship between the golf tourist, golf behaviours and destination selection (constructing the golf holiday, emotional rewards of taking a trip, total trip spend, amenities and support facilities, course characteristics and reputation of the destination). Furthermore it illuminates the complexity of these relationships through recognition of four spheres of influence (group dynamics, competition and ability, golfing capital and intermediaries). Discussion elucidates how this increased understanding of the golf tourist behaviours and destination selection might be applied to other sports, with conclusions exploring implications for the sports tourism industry and destinations.

The technical and artistic branches and ways of organizing production in Argentine soap operas

Production processes and work organization in the cultural industries have been little discussed. For this reason, the study focuses on the production phases and the division of labor in technical and artistic branches in Argentine soap operas. There are six branches: production, direction, photography, art, sound and edition. We explain the branches, the workers involved and their function and activities. This research is based on a communicational perspective, the Political Economy of Communication and recovers contributions of the Sociology of Labour. From this combination, we attempt to provide elements of analysis to understand the functioning and organisation of daily television series. In the same way, we examine the creative work, the types of work redundant or random, the division of labour and the economies of time. The methodological approach is qualitative. In this way, the examination is based on the production of interviews with key actors of the sector and the documentary and bibliographical survey so as to systematize the data for the research.

Influences and advice of theatrical consumption. A study about the effect of the theatre critics and other instances of evaluation in the habits of theatre attendance

This article analyses the influence that different criticism stages of proceedings exert in the habits of theatre attendance. The study is based on the survey carried out specifically for this research in which 210 people, who attended a theatrical representation, were interviewed in three different theatres in the city of Valencia. The study has revealed the mouth to mouth importance in the decision of attending the theatre and its stronger influence on the audiences who less frequently go to theatrical representations. The results obtained have also made clear the existence of a narrow relation between the advice effect of the theatre critics and the patterns of attendance to the theatre, just like its bigger influence between theatres with commercial orientation and those which are addressed to the broad audiences.

El periodismo deportivo condicionado por la gestión comunicativa de los clubes de fútbol: el caso del FC Barcelona

Las relaciones entre los gabinetes de Comunicación de los clubes de fútbol y los periodistas deportivos se enmarcan en el modelo de Gieber y Johnson (1961) por el que el hecho de que ambos compartan objetivos comunes, donde los gabinetes de Comunicación necesitan que los medios publiquen determinadas informaciones y los periodistas precisan de noticias que publicar, provoca una pérdida de independencia por parte de los periodistas, ya que necesitan a esos departamentos como fuentes. En la actualidad, los departamentos de Comunicación de los clubes de fútbol, como el del FC Barcelona, se han constituido en gatekeepers. Esto ha acentuado las históricas diferencias que existen entre los periodistas y los profesionales de la comunicación corporativa, incrementado por el control informativo de estos departamentos lo que provoca constantes tensiones entre ambos.

Ecuadorian migration and family strategies of social mobility: dialectic relation between emotional and financial capital

This text deals with transnational strategies of social mobility in Ecuadorian migrant households in Spain. We apply the capital accumulation model (Moser, 2009) for this purpose. The main target of this article is, beyond thinking in terms of capital stock and accumulation, the analysis in depth of the dynamics of the different types of capital, that is to say, how they interact with each other in the framework of the social mobility strategies of the migrants and their families. We are bringing into light the way some households adopt investing decisions in capitals that don't translate into any addition or earnings in all cases, on the contrary, concentrating all their efforts on the accumulation of a certain asset they may, in some cases, lead to a loss of another. We will concentrate our analysis primarily on the dynamics between the physical and financial capital and the social and emotional capital, showing the tensions produced between these two types of assets. At the same time, we will highlight how migrants negotiate their family strategies of social mobility in the transnational area. Our study is based in empirical material obtained from qualitative fieldwork (in-depth interviews) with families of migrants in the urban district of Turubamba Bajo -(south of Quito) and in Madrid. A series of households were selected where interviews were carried out in the country of origin as well as in the context of immigration, with different family members, analysing the transnational social and economic strategies of families of migrant members. Family members of migrants established in Spain were interviewed in Quito, as well as key informants in the district (school teachers, nursery members of the staff, etc.). The research was framed within the projects "Impact of migration on the development: gender and transnationalism", Ministry of Science and Innovation (SEJ2007/63179) (Laura Oso, dir. 2007-2010),"Gender, transnationalism and intergenerational strategies of social mobility", Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (FEM2011/26210) (Laura Oso, dir. 201-1-2015) and “Gender, Crossed Mobilities and Transnational Dynamics”, Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (FEM2015-67164).

Understandings of transnational families in debates on Migration and development

International migration sets in motion a range of significant transnational processes that connect countries and people. How migration interacts with development and how policies might promote and enhance such interactions have, since the turn of the millennium, gained attention on the international agenda. The recognition that transnational practices connect migrants and their families across sending and receiving societies forms part of this debate. The ways in which policy debate employs and understands transnational family ties nevertheless remain underexplored. This article sets out to discern the understandings of the family in two (often intermingled) debates concerned with transnational interactions: The largely state and policydriven discourse on the potential benefits of migration on economic development, and the largely academic transnational family literature focusing on issues of care and the micro-politics of gender and generation. Emphasizing the relation between diverse migration-development dynamics and specific family positions, we ask whether an analytical point of departure in respective transnational motherhood, fatherhood or childhood is linked to emphasizing certain outcomes. We conclude by sketching important strands of inclusions and exclusions of family matters in policy discourse and suggest ways to better integrate a transnational family perspective in global migration-development policy.

The Electoral Rise of Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe: Ideological Parameters and Social Motivations

Populist radical right parties have become major political actors in Europe. This paper analyses the path and the different phases that have led them from the fringes of public debate to their present signifi cance, which is based on their capacity to attract electoral support and infl uence the political agendas in their respective countries. Besides, an analysis of the core ideological beliefs of these parties, and of the topics on which their mobilization capacity rests, is provided, as well as of the type of voters that are attracted by them. Finally, the authors discuss the meaning and impact of the growing popularity of the ideas and proposals put forward by the populist radical right parties.

Looking for Determinants of Ontological Security in the Spain of the Crisis

The concept of ontological security has a remarkable echo in the current sociology to describe emotional status of men of late modernity. However, the concept created by Giddens in the eighties has been little used in empirical research covering various sources of risk or uncertainty. In this paper, a scale for ontological security is proposed. To do this, we start from the results of a research focused on the relationship between risk, uncertainty and vulnerability in the context of the economic crisis in Spain. These results were produced through nine focus groups and a telephone survey with standardized questionnaire applied to a national sample of 2,408 individuals over 18 years. This work is divided into three main sections. In the fi rst, a scale has been built from the results of the application of different items present in the questionnaire used. The second part explores the relationships of the scale obtained with the variables further approximate the emotional dimensions of individuals. The third part observes the variables that contribute to changes in the scale: These variables show the structural feature of the ontological security.

Rightful Resistance in the Colombian conflict. A theoretical reflection based on a Peace Community

This article considers the opportunities of civilians to peacefully resist violent conflicts or civil wars. The argument developed here is based on a field-based research on the peace community San José de Apartadó in Colombia. The analytical and theoretical framework, which delimits the use of the term ‘resistance’ in this article, builds on the conceptual considerations of Hollander and Einwohner (2004) and on the theoretical concept of ‘rightful resistance’ developed by O’Brien (1996). Beginning with a conflict-analytical classification of the case study, we will describe the long-term socio-historical processes and the organizational experiences of the civilian population, which favoured the emergence of this resistance initiative. The analytical approach to the dimensions and aims of the resistance of this peace community leads to the differentiation of O`Brian’s concept of ‘rightful resistance’.

“Work of Kinship” done by Families in Santiago de Chile

This paper reports the progress achieved in an anthropological investigation based on which there is now a more in depth understanding of some dimensions of the “kinship work” carried out by families in Chile. The main objective is to analyze the work of maintaining family links performed primarily by women within families and show how this work reproduces gender inequalities within them. On the basis of a longitudinal methodology based on semi-structured interviews, it is concluded that the work of maintaining family links performed by women is crucial but goes unnoticed because kinship obligations are seen as a naturally being part of women’s role in the family.

Of Marx and Makers: an Historical Perspective on Generative Justice

In Marxist frameworks “distributive justice” depends on extracting value through a centralized state. Many new social movements—peer to peer economy, maker activism, community agriculture, queer ecology, etc.—take the opposite approach, keeping value in its unalienated form and allowing it to freely circulate from the bottom up. Unlike Marxism, there is no general theory for bottom-up, unalienated value circulation. This paper examines the concept of “generative justice” through an historical contrast between Marx’s writings and the indigenous cultures that he drew upon. Marx erroneously concluded that while indigenous cultures had unalienated forms of production, only centralized value extraction could allow the productivity needed for a high quality of life. To the contrary, indigenous cultures now provide a robust model for the “gift economy” that underpins open source technological production, agroecology, and restorative approaches to civil rights. Expanding Marx’s concept of unalienated labor value to include unalienated ecological (nonhuman) value, as well as the domain of freedom in speech, sexual orientation, spirituality and other forms of “expressive” value, we arrive at an historically informed perspective for generative justice. 

Architecture and health care: a place for sociology.

Sociologists of health and illness have tended to overlook the architecture and buildings used in health care. This contrasts with medical geographers who have yielded a body of work on the significance of places and spaces in the experience of health and illness. A review of sociological studies of the role of the built environment in the performance of medical practice uncovers an important vein of work, worthy of further study. Through the historically situated example of hospital architecture, this article seeks to tease out substantive and methodological issues that can inform a distinctive sociology of healthcare architecture. Contemporary healthcare buildings manifest design models developed for hotels, shopping malls and homes. These design features are congruent with neoliberal forms of subjectivity in which patients are constituted as consumers and responsibilised citizens. We conclude that an adequate sociology of healthcare architecture necessitates an appreciation of both the construction and experience of buildings, exploring the briefs and plans of their designers, and observing their everyday uses. Combining approaches and methods from the sociology of health and illness and science and technology studies offers potential for a novel research agenda that takes healthcare buildings as its substantive focus.

Disorder and disconnection: parent experiences of liminality when caring for a dying child

Parents caring for a child with a life threatening or life limiting illness experience a protracted and largely unknown journey, as they and their child oscillate somewhere between life and death. Using an interpretive qualitative approach, interviews were conducted with parents (n = 25) of children who had died. Findings reveal parents’ experiences to be characterised by personal disorder and transformation as well as social marginalisation and disconnection. As such they confirm the validity of understanding these experiences as, fundamentally, one of liminality, in terms of both individual and collective response. In dissecting two inter-related dimensions of liminality, an underlying tension between how transition is subjectively experienced and how it is socially regulated is exposed. In particular, a structural failure to recognise the chronic nature of felt liminality can impede parents’ effective transition.

Legal liability of coaches: a UK perspective

Attracting more coaches is fundamental to achievement of the European dimension in sport and the further promotion of sport in the European Union. Given the emerging relationship between the law and sports coaching, recruitment of such volunteers may prove problematic. Accordingly, this article critically considers the legal liability of sports coaches. To inform this debate, the issue of negligent coaching is critically scrutinised from a UK perspective, uncovering a number of distinct legal vulnerabilities facing volunteer coaches. This includes the inherent limitations of ‘objective reasonableness’ when defining the standard of care required in the particular circumstances. More specifically, fuller analysis of the justification of customary practice, and the legal doctrine of in loco parentis, reveals important ramifications for all organisations providing training and support for coaches. In short, it is argued that proactively safeguarding coaches from professional liability should be a priority for national governing bodies, and, following the recently published EU Work Plan for Sport for 2014–2017, the Expert Group on Human Resource Management in Sport. Importantly, given the EU’s supporting, coordinating and supplementing competence in developing the European dimension in sport, a Commission funded project to address the implications of the ‘compensation culture’ in sport is also recommended.