Please excuse any unavoidable cross-postings...

Call for papers: Research in Social Problems and Public Policy
Government Secrecy
    
http://info.emeraldinsight.com/products/books/news_story.htm?PHPSESSID=9hrom
20pla5ppdfbdp0efvmic2&PHPSESSID=9hrom20pla5ppdfbdp0efvmic2&id=1970

Research in Social Problems and Public Policy (Volume 19, 2011)
Volume Editor: Susan L. Maret PhD, San José State University
 

Research in Social Problems and Public Policy (RSPPP) is a peer-reviewed
book series whose focus is on the analysis of the "potential failure of
public institutions to fulfill their obligations to the broader society."
 

For Volume 19, RSPPP seeks papers devoted to the problem of government
secrecy. Government Secrecy (GS) is a significant social, political, and
policy issue and often presents as a barrier to civic participation, public
right-to-know, historical understanding, and institutional accountability.
 

In this edition of RSPPP, we investigate government secrecy in terms of its
current theoretical descriptions as power over and concealment of
information (Bok, 1983), a "tampering of communications" (Friedrich, 1972),
the "compulsory withholding of knowledge, reinforced by the prospects of
sanctions for disclosure" (Shils, 1956), or Georg Simmel's (1906) idea of
secrecy as creating the "possibility of a second world." Also acting as a
potential philosophical foundation for this edition of RSPPP are the
functional-dysfunctional approaches to government secrecy (Friedrich, 1972),
cases where secrecy may illustrate Simmel's (1906) positive-negative
approach, the critical aspects of "necessary secrets" (Maret and Goldman,
2008), and "democratic secrecy" (Thompson, 1999).
 

Papers addressing the theme of government secrecy in any place-based setting
are acceptable, but of particular interest in Volume 19 is original
scholarship regarding government control of information and those factors
that promote government secrecy focusing on Africa, Asia, the Middle East,
Mexico, Central and South America, the EU, intergovernmental organizations
(IGOs), or are comparative in nature with the USA, investigating, for
example, the concept of secrecy as a form of regulation and "parallel
government", as suggested by the 1997 Commission on Protecting and Reducing
Government Secrecy (the Moynihan Commission).
 

Welcome are new perspectives that explore definitions and types of secrecy
(biotechnology, environmental, financial, judicial, military, intelligence,
or trade secrecy, for example) and secrecy's relations with censorship,
information ethics, national security, propaganda, executive privilege,
intellectual property, and security classification of information, as well
as those institutional, organizational, political, and regulatory mechanisms
that enable and encourage government secrecy and support the overall theme
of RSPPP of examining subjects "that lie    at the confluence of 'social
problems' and 'public policy'".
 
Manuscript submission
 
* Manuscript submission certifies that material is not copyrighted nor
currently under review for any refereed journal or conference proceedings.
If any version or parts of the manuscript have appeared, or will appear, in
another publication, the details should be disclosed to the Editor at the
time of submission.
* Submissions should be in electronic format (.doc only) and in Harvard
style.  All papers ­ including invited papers ­ undergo double-blind review.
* Please follow these links for general information
<http://info.emeraldinsight.com/products/books/series.htm?id=0196-1152&PHPSE
SSID=9hrom20pla5ppdfbdp0efvmic2>  about Research in Social Problems and
Public Policy and Emerald book series author guidelines
<http://info.emeraldinsight.com/products/ebookseries/author_guidelines.htm?P
HPSESSID=9hrom20pla5ppdfbdp0efvmic2> .
* The deadline for completed manuscripts is 1 April 2010. Volume 19 is
scheduled for publication in 2011.
 

Submissions and enquiries should be sent to the Guest Editor:
 

Susan L. Maret PhD
 E-mail:[log in to unmask]
 
References
 

Bok, S. (1983) Secrets: On the Ethics of Concealment and Revelation, Vintage
Books, New York, NY.
 

Friedrich, C.J. (1972), The Pathology of Politics: Violence, Betrayal,
Corruption, Secrecy and Propaganda, Harper & Row, New York, NY.
 

Maret, S. and Goldman, J. (Eds) (2008), Government Secrecy: Classic and
Contemporary Readings, Libraries Unlimited, Westport, CT.
 

Shils, E. (1956), The Torment of Secrecy, Free Press, Glencoe, IL.
 

Simmel, G. (1906), "The sociology of secrecy and of secret societies",
American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 11 No. 4, pp. 441-98.
 

Thompson, D. (1999), "Democratic secrecy", Political Science Quarterly, Vol.
114    No. 2, pp.181-93.