Stefan Berger is Professor of Social History and Director of the Institute for Social Movements at Ruhr University Bochum, Germany. He is also Executive Chair of the Foundation History of the Ruhr and an Honorary Professor at Cardiff University, UK.Dimitrij Owetschkin is Permanent Research Fellow at the Institute for Social Movements at Ruhr University Bochum, Germany. His recent publications cover the history of trade unions and social movements, as well as religious and church history after the Second World War.

• 1 Contested Transparencies - an Introduction - Dimitrij Owetschkin and Stefan Berger.- Part I: Transparency and Ideology: Semantic and Historical Aspects.- 2 Transparency’s Trap: Problems of an Unquestioned Norm - Frieder Vogelmann.- 3 The Fly on a Pane of Glass: Paradoxes of Transparency - Manfred Schneider.- 4 Literature, Transparency, Ideology: Functions of Literature in Negotiating Transparency - Jens Martin Gurr.- Part II: Transparency and the Public Sphere.- 5 Communication among Strangers: Concepts of the Public Sphere in American Newspapers of the 18th and Early 19th Century - Friedrich Jaeger.- 6 Journalism and Transparency: A Mass Communications Perspective - Susanne Fengler and Dominik Speck.- Part III: Transparency, State and Surveillance.- 7 Intelligence, Mistrust and Transparency: A Case Study of the German Office for the Protection of the Constitution - Constantin Goschler.- 8 The ‘Traube Affair’: Transparency as a Legitimation and Action Strategy between Surveillance, Publicity and Privacy - Christopher Kirchberg and Marcel Schmeer.- Part IV: Transparency Conflicts and Social Movements.- 9 Promises of Transparency, Promises of Participation: On the Ambivalent Rhetoric of the Occupy Movement - Martin Butler.- 10 The Dual Nature of Transparency: Corporatization and Democratization of Global Production Networks - Christian Scheper and Sabrina Zajak.- 11 The Role of Transparency in Urban Planning Processes – Jan Polivka and Christa Reicher.