Methodological Appendix

While cross-cultural comparative approaches seem to be increasingly utilized across disciplines, this volume both explores and problematizes the purpose, aim, and methods underpinning the comparison of a global value such as transparency. The volume is based on research in disparate locations of the world – from European boardrooms and expert laboratories, Malagasy vanilla plantations to Indian tea auction rooms, Mozambican ruby mining to approaches to future resource extraction in Greenland. In its ensemble, the volume does more than bring empirical specificity to disparate geographies of supply chains; instead, the comparative effort seeks to assess the processes and forms of mediation enacting transparency in ideas, objects, and practices. As such, the contributions mobilize comparative effort to examine a similar object – the ideological and aspirational goal of transparency and its attendant practices, which are produced through variously different forms: technological, qualitative, institutional.