Accountability and Transparency in the Modern Anthropocene

The book is about accountability processes and how they contribute solutions to our current environmental and global political problems. This book is different to other literature in this field. This is so because the dominant accountability discourse is shaped by what is defined as a neoliberal business case for social and environmental reform.

This book assumes a nirvana stance within globalisation where all citizens operate within the parameters of the free market and will recover from adverse economic and political damage. Further this book uses neoliberalism and free-market reforms aims as examples to implement efficient management technologies and create more competitive pressures.

Central to the argument of the book are perspectives on authenticity, expressivism and interpretivism which are found to provide a radical reworking of our understanding of being in the world. These frameworks offer a starting point for rethinking the way individuals, businesses and communities ought to be dealing politically with accountability and ecological crises. The argument builds to an accountability perspective that utilises work from expressivism, interpretivism, classical liberalism and postmodern theory. The theoretical quest undertaken in this book is to develop connections between accountability, democratic, ethical and ecological perspectives. 

Introduction.- Chapter 1: Basic issues: Liberal accountability to interpretivism.- Chapter 2: Background: Current accountability, environmental and social challenges and policy.- Chapter 3 – Liberal accountability: a critical perspective.- Chapter 4 – Accountability and democratic structures: coping with environment and social crises.- Chapter 5 – Global dimensions of accountability: relationships between the global and the local.- Chapter 6 - Nature’s value I : Deep ecology and community.- Chapter 7 – Nature's Value II: social ecology and how people relate to the world.- Chapter 8 - The Role of NGOs: filling the void between governments and the environment.- Chapter 9 - Critical Accountability: From Derrida To Taylor’s Interpretivism.- Conclusion.