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 Whistleblowing and the Sociological Imagination

“For many years Tina Uys pioneered a lonely intellectual path on whistleblowing
in South Africa. Today against the background of headlines and popular books Uys
brings her accumulated knowledge to bear on the subject with precision and com-
passion as she sensitively explores the biographies of whistleblowers. While referees
in soccer matches have VAR as back-up, those who blow the whistle on corporate
and state corruption have little support. By placing whistleblowing within the lens
of social justice Uys makes us see the phenomenon in new ways, turning what is
often isolated as private troubles into a public issue.”
—Professor Ashwin Desai, University of Johannesburg, South Africa

“In Whistleblowing and the Sociological Imagination Professor Tina Uys shows that
men and women who courageously expose organizational misbehaviour have too
often been outrageously mistreated. This brilliant clinical sociologist asks what can
be done to improve matters? She argues for more ethical workplaces with open
communication channels cultivating mutual trust to the benefit of all. Enjoy the
skilful analysis of an accomplished practitioner at the height of her powers.”
—Professor Dennis Smith, Loughborough University, UK

“Professor Uys provides an amazing amount of information about whistleblowing

in a number of countries, particularly focusing on cases in the United States and
South Africa. The book is a ‘must read’ for whistleblowers as well as companies
and governments that are looking to improve their organizational processes. The
book also will be of interest to professors, graduate students, researchers and com-
munity members who are concerned about illegal, unsafe or wasteful practices in
any private, public or government organization.”
—Jan Marie Fritz, Ph.D., C.C.S., University of Cincinnati (USA)
 Tina Uys

Whistleblowing and
the Sociological
Imagination
Tina Uys
Department of Sociology
University of Johannesburg
Johannesburg, South Africa

ISBN 978-1-137-39971-7    ISBN 978-1-137-39445-3 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-39445-3

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2022

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole
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The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
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The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
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 Contents

1 Whistleblowing and the Sociological Imagination  1

Introduction   1
The Concept of Whistleblowing   5
How Has Whistleblowing Been Received?   5
Researching Whistleblowing  12
Whistleblowing as a Social Phenomenon  13
Plan of the Book  16
References  19

2 What Constitutes Whistleblowing? 25

Introduction  25
Disclosure of Wrongdoing  27
Who Makes the Disclosure?  29
Whether the Disclosure Was Authorized, Unauthorized, or
Role-Prescribed  31
Do Whistleblowers Necessarily Suffer Retaliation?  33
Who Is the Recipient of the Disclosure? The Distinction Between
Internal, External, and Public Whistleblowing  33
Should the Disclosure Be Made Openly, or Do Anonymous
Disclosures Also Qualify as Whistleblowing?  35
Was the Disclosure in the Public Interest?  39
Conclusion  42
References  43

v
vi Contents

3 South African Whistleblowers 49

Introduction  49
Early Whistleblowers  50
Influx Control and the Pass Laws: Adam Klein  50
Exchange Control: Nico Alant  52
Alant and the Reserve Bank  52
Alant and the Financial Services Board (FSB)  54
Alant’s Career After Leaving the World of Financial
Regulation  55
The Mpumalanga Driver’s License Scam: John Muller  56
The Road Accident Fund Fraud: Mark Hess  57
The Dog Training Exercise: Andries (Jakes) Jacobs  58
Whistleblowing Following the Promulgation of the Protected
Disclosures Act, Nr. 26 of 2000  59
Pollution by ISCOR: Pieter Van Eeden  59
The Cape Town Street Naming Scandal: Victoria Johnson  61
Nepotism in the Department of Justice: Mike Tshishonga  63
Mpumalanga Matric (Grade 12) Examination Fraud: Vicky
Breytenbach  64
Grootvlei Prison: Tatolo Setlai  65
Financial Irregularities at Denel: Keith Grieve  66
Irregular Share Trading at Andisa Securities: Allison
Pedzinski  67
Travelgate: Harry Charlton  68
Limpopo Textbook Procurement Irregularities: Solomon
(Solly) Tshitangano  70
The “State Capture” Whistleblowers  72
The Trillian Whistleblowers  73
The Gupta Emails: Anonymous Whistleblowers  74
Two Whistleblowers Who Paid with Their Lives  75
Mbombela FIFA World Cup Stadium: Jimmy Mohlala  75
Fraud and Corruption at a Northwest Province Municipality:
Moss Phakoe  77
Conclusion  78
References  79
 Contents  vii

4 Voice and Silence: Who Blows the Whistle and Why? 83

Introduction  83
Whistleblowing and Voice  84
The Whistleblowing Process  87
The Prosocial Organizational Behavior (POB) Model of
Whistleblowing  88
Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA)  89
Background Factors and Whistleblowing Intentions  91
Recognition of Organizational Wrongdoing  93
Attitude and Behavioral Beliefs Toward Whistleblowing  96
Consequences of Whistleblowing  96
Consequences of Inaction  97
Perceived Norms and Normative Beliefs  99
Perceived Behavioral Control and Control Beliefs 104
Conclusion 106
References 107

5 Personal Troubles: The Impact on the Whistleblower113

Introduction 113
Whistleblowing as a Personal Trouble 114
The Transformative Response to Whistleblowing 115
The Reactionary Response to Whistleblowing 115
Retaliation Against Whistleblowers 116
Work-Related Retaliation 116
Social Retaliation 118
Physical Retaliation 119
The Effects of Retaliation on the Whistleblower 121
Effects on the Whistleblower’s Finances 121
Psychosocial Effects of Whistleblowing 122
Effects on Physical Health 124
Effects on Interpersonal Relations in the Workplace 124
Effect on Relationships with Family and Friends 125
The Whistleblower’s Responses to Retaliation 126
Conclusion 131
References 132
viii Contents

6 Public Issues: The Impact on the Organization and the

Public137
Introduction 137
When Is Retaliation Most Likely to Follow a Disclosure? 138
Power Relationships 138
Whistleblower Persistence 141
Whistleblowing Channels 141
Personal Characteristics of the Whistleblower 142
Organizational Characteristics 143
Disclosure Recipients 144
Why Does Retaliation Occur? 145
Whistleblowing as a Threat to Individual Justification Motives 145
Whistleblowing as a Threat to the Organization’s Legitimacy 147
Whistleblowing as a Threat to Collegial Relationships 150
The Effectiveness of Whistleblowing 151
The Power of the Whistleblower 152
Organizational Dependence on Wrongdoers 153
Organizational Dependence on the Wrongdoing 153
Resolving the Paradox of Whistleblowing 155
An Ethics-Oriented Climate 155
Structural Provision for Ethics Management 157
Ethical Leadership and Whistleblower Support 159
Conclusion 161
References 161

7 Protecting Whistleblowers: The Effectiveness

of Legislation and Organizational Support165
Introduction 165
Institutionalizing Whistleblowing 166
Anti-retaliation Legislation 169
Protection Against Victimization 169
What Can Be Disclosed? 170
Who Should Be Protected? 171
When Does a Disclosure Qualify for Protection? 172
How Should Disclosures Be Made and to Whom? 175
What Relief Should a Whistleblower Be Able to Claim,
and How Do They Access Relief? 176
Effectiveness of Anti-retaliation Legislation 178
 Contents  ix

The Structural Model of Whistleblower Protection 181

Internal Reporting Mechanisms 182
Investigation of Disclosures 184
Enforcement Mechanisms 185
Conclusion 186
References 186

8 Assisting Whistleblowers in Advancing Social Justice

in the Workplace191
Introduction 191
Whistleblowing and Organizational Justice 193
Procedural Justice 195
Distributive Justice 196
Interactional Justice 197
Clinical Sociology in Pursuit of a Better World in the Workplace 200
Conceptualizing Clinical Sociology 200
Wellbeing and Resilience 201
Interventions Aimed at Promoting Organizational Justice 202
Promoting Organizational Justice 204
Advancing Organizational Justice Through the
Organizational Culture 206
Conclusion 208
References 209

References213

Index247
 CHAPTER 1

Whistleblowing and the Sociological

Imagination

Introduction
As the 2013 US spring folded into summer, the rumors of the identity of
the National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower began to seem like a
daytime soap opera, with the final episode scheduled for June 9, 2013.
When the central figure was unmasked as 29-year-old information tech-
nology (IT) contractor Edward Snowden, it was far from the James Bond
prototype that people envisaged. But his story and the exposés that came
in its wake were to have an ongoing global impact. Variously described as
a Walter Mitty, Svengali, gladiator for democracy, or a betrayer of the Stars
and Stripes, Snowden, in time, would become linked to WikiLeaks co-­
founder Julian Assange. Together they would begin to redefine the whole
idea of whistleblowing as initial leaks turned into a flood of information
and copycat acts like the revelations of the Panama Papers.1 One of the
chilling issues was that they were blowing the whistle on the abuse of
power by governments purportedly committed to democratic norms.
Snowden‘s spectacular launch into the public arena was not a sudden
Damascus turn. Instead, he had had nagging doubts about US
government actions ever since he joined the Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA) in Geneva, Switzerland, in 2007, working as a computer network

1
The Panama Papers consists of more than 11 million confidential documents detailing
the tax evasion and money laundering services provided by Mossack Fonseca, an offshore law
firm based in Panama. An anonymous whistleblower leaked the documents to a German
newspaper.

© The Author(s) 2022 1

T. Uys, Whistleblowing and the Sociological Imagination,
https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-39445-3_1
2 T. UYS

security analyst. This position provided him with broad access to a variety
of classified documents. As a result, he began seriously questioning
whether what he saw the US security agencies doing was justified. His
doubts strengthened when he accidentally came across a top-secret report
while working as an NSA systems analyst in Japan. The report detailed the
NSA’s highly secret mass surveillance program, a program whose existence
was later flatly denied by James Clapper, the then Director of National
Intelligence, in sworn testimony to the United States Senate Select
Committee on Intelligence in early 2013. By this stage, Snowden’s doubts
had crystallized into disillusionment. He had become convinced that the
NSA’s sweeping surveillance program posed “an existential threat to
democracy” (Snowden in Greenwald et al., 2013, p. 6).
In May 2013, while working for a company contracted to the NSA as a
network security analyst in Hawaii, Snowden started making copies of
secret and incriminating documents belonging to the Agency. He told his
supervisor that he needed a few weeks’ leave of absence to receive treat-
ment for epilepsy. On May 20, 2013, he took a flight to Hong Kong,
where he met with Laura Poitras, a documentary filmmaker, and Glenn
Greenwald, a journalist for The Guardian, a British newspaper. Shortly
afterward, Snowden’s disclosures and documents started to appear in The
Guardian. In June 2014, the US government formally charged Snowden
under the Espionage Act and requested his extradition from Hong Kong.
When the Hong Kong government indicated their unwillingness to afford
Snowden protection, he departed on an Aeroflot flight headed to Ecuador
via Moscow, Havana, and Caracas, with the assistance of Sarah Harrison,
journalist and editor for WikiLeaks. Upon arrival at Moscow’s
Sheremetyevo airport, Russian authorities detained him, as the US gov-
ernment had revoked his passport and instructed airlines not to allow him
to travel. He spent the next 40 days at the airport in limbo. During this
time, the return flight of President Morales of Bolivia attending the annual
Gas Exporting Countries Forum in Moscow was diverted to Vienna,
Austria, on suspicion that Snowden was on board. This incident probably
played a role in the Russian government deciding to grant him temporary
asylum on August 1, 2014. In October 2020, he was granted permanent
residency in Russia (Ilyushina, 2020a; MacAskill, 2019; Snowden, 2019).
Snowden was not the first to disclose employer secrets in the belief that
he was serving the public interest. There were many before him, in many
countries. One prominent case is Daniel Ellsberg, a military analyst
employed by RAND Corporation in the United States, who released a
 1 WHISTLEBLOWING AND THE SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION 3

secret report known as the Pentagon Papers to the United States Senate
Foreign Relations Committee in 1969, and to various newspapers two
years later. The United States Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara,
had commissioned the report to document events of the Vietnam War.
The Pentagon Papers revealed that successive US administrations had
deceived the American public and Congress deliberately regarding the
scale and nature of US actions during and even before the outbreak of the
Vietnam War. These revelations further undermined public support for
the war. The Nixon administration retaliated by charging Ellsberg with
theft of government property, conspiracy, and espionage. These charges
were dismissed when investigators of the Watergate scandal discovered
that the Nixon administration had engaged in unlawful efforts to discredit
Ellsberg (Santoro & Kumar, 2018, p. 13).
Other well-known US whistleblowers preceding Snowden are Frank
Serpico, Mark Felt (“Deep Throat”), Jeffrey Wigand, and Thomas Drake,
whose revelations were immortalized in blockbuster movies. The maga-
zine Time declared 2002 the Year of the Whistleblower when it nominated
three female whistleblowers as persons of the year. Both Sherron Watkins,
an Enron accounting executive, and Cynthia Cooper, a WorldCom vice
president, drew attention to financial impropriety in the accounting meth-
ods employed by their respective companies. Coleen Rowley, an FBI staff
attorney, sent a memo to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI),
Director Robert Mueller, describing how the bureau disregarded her FBI
field office’s requests—before the September 11 World Trade Center
attacks—requesting an investigation of the activities of Zacarias Moussaoui.
Moussaoui was subsequently sentenced to life without parole for his role
in planning the attacks (Lipman, 2012, pp. 69–72; Semuel, 2020).
Chelsea Manning, a US Army intelligence analyst, employed WikiLeaks
to release a wide variety of classified documents, including videos of US
airstrikes in Iraq and Afghanistan, US diplomatic cables, and army reports.
Her 2013 conviction on 17 of 22 charges, including infringements of the
Espionage Act and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, theft of United
States government property, as well as charges related to a refusal to obey
lawful commands, resulted in a 35-year sentence at a maximum-security
US military prison. However, President Barack Obama commuted her
sentence to seven years of confinement dating from her arrest on May 27,
2010 (Biography.com, 2020). From March 2019, Chelsea Manning spent
close to another year in custody after refusing to comply with a subpoena
4 T. UYS

to testify before a grand jury about her collaboration with WikiLeaks

(Biography.com Editors, 2020).
Many whistleblowers across the world raised their concerns prior to
Snowden making his revelations about US intelligence’s mass surveillance
program. However, globally their disclosures seemed to remain in the
limelight for a relatively brief period. With Snowden, it seemed like some-
thing had finally shifted: his actions led to a new international public
awareness that specific systems are so over-protected and secretive that
there is a strong need for those with the courage to reveal information
about perceived transgressions. Or perhaps it is a public awareness that
democratic processes are not as effective as they should be? Maybe the
shift also lies in a more apparent public concern about the suffering whis-
tleblowers generally experience due to their actions. While his initial dis-
closures did not bring forth many “new” revelations (Berghel, 2014,
p. 68), the debates they engendered created a prominence for whistle-
blowers worldwide that they had never experienced before. This book
focuses on understanding this shift and utilizing the sociological imagina-
tion to do so.
The bulk of the empirical research on whistleblowing has been con-
ducted within the context of the relatively stable democracies of the Global
North. According to William de Maria (2005), whistleblowing can only
challenge wrongdoing in the workplace successfully if the basic require-
ments of a democratic state are in place. South Africa’s challenges as a
young democracy in the Global South in establishing and building robust
democratic institutions and the pressures from different constituencies to
advance their particular interests, provide a compelling case study to reflect
on how democratic culture, or the lack of it, enables or constrains whistle-
blowing. The debate around the media, freedom of speech, accountability,
and transparency, both in the public and private spheres, illustrates the
importance of exploring the role of democratic principles in ensuring
effective disclosures of organizational wrongdoing. On the other hand,
the perceived threat of international terrorism challenges the democratic
process in the United States. Comparing these two countries and others in
the Global North and South will demonstrate the extent to which a demo-
cratic culture is a prerequisite for successful whistleblowing.
 1 WHISTLEBLOWING AND THE SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION 5

The Concept of Whistleblowing

What is whistleblowing? A whistleblower is a present or past member of an
organization who discloses suspicions about organizational wrongdoing
to somebody that s/he believes could take action. When whistleblowers
communicate the message within their organization (using either pre-
scribed or non-prescribed channels), it is deemed internal whistleblowing.
Approaching an agency outside the organization, such as a regulatory
authority, is regarded as external whistleblowing. Public whistleblowing
entails entering the pulic domain by making your disclosures to the media,
as Snowden has done. Authorities generally expect that whistleblowers
should exhaust internal forms of disclosure before resorting to external
channels, or especially the media (if they consider such exposure permis-
sible at all).
Whistleblowers can expect to face difficulties. Regardless of whether
the disclosure was internal, external, or public, or whether it was autho-
rized, unauthorized, or role-prescribed, organizations often regard these
disclosures as illegitimate. The exposure of information about organiza-
tional wrongdoing, particularly if placed in the public domain, is viewed as
a form of betrayal. Such disclosures usually lead to retaliation by the orga-
nization. Acting as loyal and caring employees, whistleblowers often do
not expect the severe negative responses they receive due to disclosing
irregularities in their places of work.

How Has Whistleblowing Been Received?

Worldwide, there is a gradual recognition that the act of whistleblowing is
making an essential contribution to the fight against organizational mis-
conduct. However, as evidenced by Edward Snowden‘s drama, a more
ambivalent attitude is often displayed toward the whistleblowers as indi-
viduals. There are ongoing global debates about whether whistleblowers
are heroes or traitors and the kind of protection they should receive.
The United States of America is a prime example of the paradoxes and
virulence characterizing this debate. While the validation by Time resulted
in a generally positive perception of the whistleblowers identified, and
some whistleblowers have received high financial rewards, others, espe-
cially in the intelligence community, are less fortunate. High stakes are
involved in whistleblowing, as shown in the United States’ relentless cam-
paign against WikiLeaks, a conduit for whistleblowers, and its founder,
Julian Assange.
6 T. UYS

In 2006 Julian Assange established WikiLeaks, a non-profit organiza-

tion and website providing an outlet for whistleblowers to anonymously
post secret information about what they perceive to be evidence of orga-
nizational (primarily governmental) wrongdoing (Lozano et al., 2011).
This unleashed a passionate debate concerning balancing the benefits of
the transformative potential of public disclosures with the potentially
harmful consequences of such disclosures, especially to national security,
what Fenster (2012, p. 753) calls the transparency balance.
The launch of a counterintelligence investigation into WikiLeaks in
2008 by US authorities highlighted the intelligence community’s concern
about the threat WikiLeaks posed to its ability to secure classified informa-
tion. In March 2010, WikiLeaks posted the investigation’s report on its
website with the claim that US intelligence was attempting to “destroy”
Wikileaks and its website (Fenster, 2012, pp. 766–767). In the context of
rising tensions, WikiLeaks started posting a series of military documents2
and videos from April 2010 onwards. These posts included a video show-
ing an airstrike in Baghdad (dubbed “Collateral Murder”), in which Iraqi
civilians and two journalists were killed by a US Apache helicopter.
WikiLeaks also released documents dealing with the Afghanistan war (“the
Afghan War Diary”), and thousands of secret United States State
Department diplomatic cables (“Cablegate”) (Berghel, 2012, p. 70).
As the dispute escalated, the questioning of the legitimacy and motives
of WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange, increased significantly.
Following the US government’s threat of legal action, various attacks
undermined WikiLeaks’ financial and structural viability, such as the clo-
sure of WikiLeaks’ account at the Swiss bank PostFinance. Visa,
MasterCard, and PayPal also ceased to process payments to WikiLeaks,
and Amazon discontinued the hosting of WikiLeaks on its servers (Gellman
& Harrell, 2010), while electronic attacks twice disabled the WikiLeaks
website. In return, a group of Internet activists, calling itself Anonymous,
launched distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against the compa-
nies that suspended the WikiLeaks accounts (Mackey, 2010).
Assange faced scrutiny of his personal life and legal challenges as well.
In August 2010, Swedish prosecutors pursued an investigation into rape
and molestation charges against Assange by two Swedish WikiLeaks vol-
unteers. This investigation culminated in Britain’s Supreme Court

2
Chelsea Manning provided Wikileaks with these documents.
 1 WHISTLEBLOWING AND THE SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION 7

ordering his extradition to Sweden at the end of May 2012. Assange

sought refuge at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in mid-August 2012
and requested political asylum (Lai, 2012). The relationship between
Assange and the Ecuadorean government soured after the election of
Lenin Moreno as president of Ecuador in 2017, culminating in Moreno
revoking Assange’s asylum status in a tweet in April 2019 and Metropolitan
Police officers arresting him after his eviction from the Embassy. In May
2019, Assange received a 50-week jail sentence for breaching his bail con-
ditions. On January 4, 2021, British district judge Vanessa Baraitser
rejected a US extradition application on espionage and hacking-related
charges on the grounds that Assange’s mental health problems posed a
suicide risk should he be extradited to the United States to stand trial.
However, she refused to grant him bail while awaiting the US govern-
ment’s expected appeal. Based on his history, she considered Assange a
flight risk (Agence France-Presse in Washington, 2021; BBC News, 2019;
Noack & O’Grady, 2019; Quinn, 2021; Wintour, 2021).
Edward Snowden’s disclosures about the extensive worldwide surveil-
lance programs of the NSA in June 2013 unleashed a media frenzy. While
he has managed to provoke a debate on the limits of the security state,
surveillance, transparency, and privacy, a concurrent and somewhat more
robust dispute continues to focus on whether his disclosures were justi-
fied. Snowden’s detractors include members of government agencies
(Masnick, 2014) and prominent politicians across the political divide, such
as former House Speaker John Boehner (Johnson, 2013) and Democratic
Senator Dianne Feinstein (Herb, 2013), who both branded him a traitor
very soon after his identity became known. While acknowledging the posi-
tive impact of the debate on data privacy and national security following
Snowden’s disclosures, President Obama argued that he could only con-
sider pardoning Snowden once he has subjected himself to the US legal
process. President Trump’s first appointment as Director of the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) from 2017 to 2018, Mike Pompeo, believed
that Snowden deserved to be executed for his “traitorous activities” (Toor,
2016). In an about-turn from his earlier viewpoint that Snowden was “a
spy who should be executed,” President Trump toyed with pardoning him
prior to leaving office, but ultimately did not follow through (Gaurav, 2021).
Some prominent business executives also have expressed reservations.
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates stopped just short of calling Snowden a
traitor, in contrast to Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, who expressed his
admiration for Snowden’s willingness to make sacrifices for a principle
8 T. UYS

(Nield, 2014). Some members of the intelligence community also weighed

in. Nigel Inkster (2014), a former member of the British Secret Intelligence
Service, blamed the public outcry over Snowden’s revelations on myths
and misapprehensions regarding the scale and the legality of mass surveil-
lance and the effectiveness of legal protections against unlawful, intrusive
surveillance. He argued in favor of a “realist perspective that countries are
entitled to use covert capabilities to secure national advantage, provided
that this is subject to proper controls” (Inkster, 2014, p. 58).
Snowden‘s most visible supporters come from the liberal media, NGOs,
and academe, both nationally and internationally. Snowden as well as the
reporters and newspapers involved have received awards for their role in
the exposé (Cohen, 2014). The Pulitzer Prize for Public Service awarded
to The Guardian US and Washington Post newspapers for publicizing
Snowden’s revelations about the NSA’s widespread secret surveillance was
hailed as an “undeniable validation of the significance of the Snowden
disclosures” (Blaylock, 2014). Starting with the Whistleblower Award of
the Federation of German Scientists in 2013, Snowden has won a vast
array of awards, including the 2014 Ridenhour Prize for Truth-Telling,
the 2014 Right Livelihood Honorary Award, the latter jointly with
Guardian editor, Alan Rusbridger, and the 2016 Norsk PEN Ossietzky
Prize. Since 2016 he has been serving as president of the Board of Directors
of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, a non-profit focused on promot-
ing public interest journalism.
Snowden’s disclosures generated considerable debate about the consti-
tutionality of the NSA’s surveillance programs and the necessary balance
between privacy and security. Paul Bernal (2016, p. 245) argued that:

Surveillance impacts not just upon individual privacy, but upon a wide range
of human rights, from freedom of expression and freedom of association
and assembly, to protection from discrimination—some because privacy acts
as a gateway or guardian to those rights, and some independently of what is
generally thought of as privacy.

Bernal also argued that the justification for internet surveillance needs
to find a fitting balance “between people’s rights and liberties and the
duties of states both to provide security and to protect freedoms for their
citizens” (Bernal, 2016, p. 245). Other examples of authors interrogating
the balance between privacy and security are Bigo (2019), Lahneman
(2016), Edgar (2017), Lefebvre (2018), and Walsh and Miller (2016).
 1 WHISTLEBLOWING AND THE SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION 9

Snowden’s revelations furthermore sparked various analyses of the impact

of surveillance on journalistic practices, in particular the relationship
between journalists and their sources.3
In an analysis of eight ethical dilemmas with practical consequences
flowing from Snowden‘s disclosures, Michael Andregg (2016, p. 110):

concludes that by far the largest issue is whether US intelligence profession-

als regard the US Constitution as supreme law in America or non-disclosure
contracts with individual agencies or the US government. Reactions to
Snowden follow this pattern, with security-cleared insiders generally consid-
ering him a traitor and ordinary people generally considering him a hero for
telling the public about illegal activity with the National Security Agency
directed against fundamental, and constitutionally protected civil liberties
like freedom of speech.

While Snowden has arguably achieved his goal of provoking a global

debate about the appropriate limits to the government’s right to conduct
mass surveillance, the impact of his disclosures on legislative changes was
more modest. In 2015, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second
Circuit declared the National Security Agency’s (NSA) mass collection of
Americans’ telephone metadata to be a violation of the terms of the Patriot
Act. Shortly afterward, the US Congress introduced the USA Freedom
Act, which supposedly curbed the worst excesses of the previous regime by
imposing some limits on the ability of American intelligence agencies to
conduct mass surveillance on US citizens (Lepore, 2019). Ironically, in
2018 the Office of the Director of National Intelligence acknowledged
that the NSA’s bulk collection of telephone data had dramatically increased
after the law’s enactment (Eddington, 2019). In September 2020, the US
Court of Appeals ruled that the NSA mass surveillance program that
Edward Snowden exposed, violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Act, and rejected NSA claims that the program had played a critical role in
fighting domestic terrorism (BBC News, 2020).
After Snowden, exposures by whistleblowers seemed to become an
everyday occurrence globally. What follows are just a few examples of
some prominent cases. In 2014, Yuliya Stepanova, a Russian middle-­
distance runner, and her husband, Vitaly, a member of the Russian Anti-
Doping Agency, fled to Germany, two days before a German documentary
3
See, for example, Johnson (2017), Lashmar (2017), Ruby et al. (2017), Wahl-Jorgensen
et al. (2017), and Waters (2018).
10 T. UYS

broadcast in which they revealed the involvement of Russian authorities in

an extensive state-sponsored doping program for Russian athletes. Their
exposé set a domino effect in motion. An investigation by the World Anti-
Doping Agency (WADA) followed, which found evidence of Russian
authorities engaging in a systematic and widespread doping operation.
This campaign included providing elite athletes with banned performance-
enhancing substances and assisting them in manipulating doping tests to
evade detection. The International Association of Athletics Federations
(IAAF) banned all Russian track and field athletes from participating in
the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. After relocating to the
United States in early 2016, Grigory Rodchenkov, considered the “mas-
termind of Russian sports doping” and head of the Moscow drug-testing
laboratory (Majendie, 2020a), confessed to his role in implementing the
Russian doping strategy. Fearing Russian retribution, the Stepanovas and
Rodchenkov prefer to keep their locations a secret (Ash, 2016; Macur,
2019; Majendie, 2020a, 2020b).
On April 3, 2016, reports on an investigation by the International
Consortium of Investigative Journalists hit the front pages of media out-
lets worldwide. The Panama Papers, as it is known, consists of more than
11 million confidential documents detailing the tax evasion and money
laundering services provided by Mossack Fonseca, an offshore law firm
based in Panama. The exposure of dubious financial practices by high-­
ranking individuals, including public officials from more than 200 coun-
tries, persuaded government authorities to strengthen measures aimed at
ensuring transparency and financial accountability. The identity of the
whistleblower who leaked the documents to the German newspaper,
Süddeutsche Zeitung, remains unknown (Fitzgibbon & Hudson, 2021).
Another example of whistleblowing that had ramifications across
national borders is Christopher Wylie. He revealed in March 2018 that
Cambridge Analytica, a British political consulting firm, had systematically
harvested the personal information of more than 87 million Facebook
users. Cambridge Analytica engaged in digital political profiling that
enabled political campaigns, such as Donald Trump’s 2016 electoral cam-
paign and the Brexit Vote Leave campaign, to target likely voters with
great accuracy, often including misinformation and fake news (Olesen,
2020, p. 11).
Donald Trump had to devote a large part of the final years of his presi-
dency (2019–2020) to dealing with the fall-out from the so-called Ukraine
whistleblower. A CIA officer made an anonymous complaint under
 1 WHISTLEBLOWING AND THE SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION 11

provisions of the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act

accusing President Trump of attempting to pressurize Ukraine’s President,
Volodymyr Zelenskiy, into investigating Hunter Biden, the son of his
political opponent, Joe Biden. An investigation followed, resulting in the
US House of Representatives impeaching President Trump in December
2019 on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. However,
the US Senate acquitted him in February 2020. President Trump and his
Republican supporters engaged in a persistent intimidation campaign,
attacking the whistleblower’s credibility and calling for the exposure of his
identity, which undermined the protections granted to a whistleblower
under the provisions of the Act (Aleem & Collins, 2019; Bakaj & Zaid,
2020; Gabbatt, 2019).
The COVID-19 pandemic has provided fertile ground for a prolifera-
tion of opportunities of committing various kinds of fraud and deception
that put the health and safety of the public at risk. Whistleblowers have
played a crucial role in exposing these transgressions. The most famous is
perhaps Dr. Li Wenliang, an ophthalmologist based in Wuhan in China.
He was one of the first to warn his colleagues about patients displaying
symptoms of a virus similar to SARS in December 2019. In January 2020,
local police authorities reprimanded him for spreading falsehoods. He
contracted the virus from a patient and died on February 7, 2020. It is
believed that a quicker response to the concerns he raised would have
saved millions of lives worldwide (Nie & Elliott, 2020).
In October 2020, a UK whistleblowing charity, Protect, published a
report with the title: “The best warning system: whistleblowing during
COVID-19—An Examination of the Experiences of UK Whistleblowers
during a Global Pandemic.” Whistleblowers contacted their helpline to
raise concerns about workplace safety during the pandemic, particularly
workplaces with shortages of personal protection equipment (PPE), fail-
ing to follow government safety guidelines, and furlough fraud. Over a
period of seven months, Protect found that the employers of 41% of
COVID-19 whistleblowers were indifferent to their concerns, while 20%
were fired.
In South Africa, Corruption Watch, a non-profit organization serving
as a platform for reporting corruption, published a report in February
2021 highlighting corruption related to the implementation of the
Temporary Employer/Employee Relief Scheme (TERS). The scheme was
aimed at providing temporary support to employees whose income was
reduced due to lockdown restrictions. An analysis of 126 whistleblower
12 T. UYS

reports revealed widespread theft of COVID-19 unemployment benefits,

bribery of inspectors to turn a blind eye, and claims for benefits for former
employees or for employees who were actually working during the
lockdown.
These instances show the contestation and push-back from the organi-
zations and institutions implicated in the disclosures. The events also are
instructive of both organizational and institutional responses as well as
personal consequences for whistleblowers. Furthermore, they demon-
strate the controversy in the public domain that Olesen (2018) calls the
“democratic drama of whistleblowing.” He argues that whistleblowers are
field transgressors who break out of their organization’s distinct field by
revealing actions that contradict “the universalizing and democratic aspi-
rations of the civil sphere” (Olesen, 2020, p. 517). Retaliation is generally
the result of a perception that whistleblowers have violated the normative
and contractual obligations associated with their membership of the orga-
nization and, therefore, the field itself.

Researching Whistleblowing
This book is the culmination of a journey that started about 30 years ago
when I first became aware of the existence of whistleblowing and its impact
on whistleblowers’ lives. I could not understand why my husband, Nico
Alant, received such a frosty reception from his management when he
tried to convince them to address some workplace issues he had identified.
A colleague gave me an article to read, and I realized that his experiences
had a name: that of a whistleblower. My first paper on whistleblowing was
a joint effort with my husband, presented at the Pan-African Conference
on Fraud and the African Renaissance held at Uganda Martyrs University
in April 1999 (Alant & Uys, 1999). Researching whistleblowing helped
me make sense of Nico’s experiences over the 12 years that his long-­
drawn-­out whistleblower journey lasted. My research on whistleblowing
coincided with my development as a clinical sociologist.4 I had a ringside
seat observing the processes that led to the promulgation of the South
African Protected Disclosures Act nr 26 of 2000. The South African Law
Reform Commission consulted me on proposed changes to the South
African Protected Disclosures Act aimed at strengthening legal protection

4
Clinical sociology entails the assessment of situations with the aim to improve people’s
living conditions through a combination of analysis and intervention.
 1 WHISTLEBLOWING AND THE SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION 13

for whistleblowers. I was happy to see some of my suggestions finding

their way into the Protected Disclosures Amendment Act nr 5 of 2017,
probably because of widespread support. My research has enabled me to
advise my university regarding implementing a whistleblowing policy and
to present workshops on whistleblowing at my university. These opportu-
nities have strengthened my belief that sociology should move beyond
understanding the world to also improving it.

Whistleblowing as a Social Phenomenon

Wherever you are in the world, hardly a day goes by without media reports
of whistleblower exposures and the sacrifices they have made. These
reports often use the whistleblower’s private life and motives as a lens
when judging the legitimacy of the whistleblower’s actions.
The point of departure of this book is that whistleblowing should be
viewed as a social phenomenon, through employing C Wright Mills’ con-
cept of the “sociological imagination” in developing a sociological focus
on whistleblowing. Despite Mills’ untimely death at the relatively early age
of 45 in 1962, he left an enduring legacy, not only for American sociology
but for the social sciences globally. His book, The Sociological Imagination,
first published in 1959, had an important impact on social science through
its insistence that social scientists should confront the significant moral
and political issues of the day. This entails practicing the politics of truth
while striving to “clarify the ideal of freedom and the ideal of reason”
through locating “themselves within the intellectual life and the social-­
historical structure of their times” (Mills, 1970, p. 198).
As a form of critical thinking, the sociological imagination demon-
strates an awareness of the relationship between individuals and wider
society. It enables us to grasp the links between our immediate, personal
social settings and the remote, impersonal social world that surrounds us
and helps to shape us. Such an analysis involves distinguishing between
“the personal troubles of milieu” and “the public issues of social struc-
ture” (Mills, 1970, p. 14) as well as considering both.
Understanding whistleblowing in terms of personal troubles entails
exploring the circumstances of whistleblowers and the impact that the fall-­
out from their disclosures has on their relations with others. Framing
whistleblowing as a personal trouble requires that one considers the biog-
raphy and the social setting of the individual whistleblower. A personal
trouble is essentially a private matter where the whistleblower experiences
14 T. UYS

organizational wrongdoing as threatening personal values. The retaliation

the whistleblower suffers following the disclosures also generates private
troubles for the whistleblower. The resolution of these private troubles
needs to be sought within the social context of the whistleblower as well.
On the other hand, whistleblowing is a public issue to the extent that it
relates to “some value cherished by publics [that] is felt to be threatened”
(Mills, 1970, p. 15). These publics would involve the organizations, the
societal groups, and even society as a whole, in which the perceived wrong-
doing is occurring and whose public interest is being served (or disadvan-
taged) by the disclosures.
These publics generally engage in debates about the nature of the val-
ues they cherish and what actions are threatening core values. These
debates reflect the public nature of the issue at hand. The disclosure of
perceived wrongdoing and the retaliation that often follows could gener-
ate disputes about whether the seriousness of the wrongdoing justified the
whistleblower’s actions or whether the organization’s response was com-
mensurate with the impact of the whistleblower’s actions on the organiza-
tion. As a public issue, whistleblowing impacts broader social structures
and displays “a crisis in institutional arrangements” (Mills, 1970, p. 15).
Therefore, taking this track requires us to move away from only focusing
on the individual whistleblower and his/her social context to also explor-
ing whistleblowing’s impact as a broader societal issue rooted in the social
structure of society. As such, it requires connecting the unique biography
of whistleblowers with wider historical and structural forces. In doing so,
the whistleblower as an individual is, however, not removed from the
equation, as the sociological imagination encompasses “the capacity to
range from the most impersonal and remote transformations to the most
intimate features of the human self—and to see the relations between the
two” (Mills, 1970, p. 14).
Employing the sociological imagination to study whistleblowing is par-
ticularly apt given Mills’ commitment to promoting what he called “the
politics of truth” (Mills, 1970, p. 198). Mills exhorted intellectuals to
resist being forced into a choice between becoming absorbed into posi-
tions of power and thereby losing their critical independence or rejecting
access to power and becoming irrelevant as a result. Instead, the alterna-
tive is engaging in a politics of truth: “exposing the power of … leaders to
manipulate the public’s understandings of social reality, and asserting the
intellectual’s special responsibility to challenge that officially defined real-
ity and to aid the formation of democratic publics” (Geary, 2009, p. 145).
 1 WHISTLEBLOWING AND THE SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION 15

A case can be made that whistleblowers play a similar role as they are also
courageous individuals who, acting on principle, “debunk commonly held
notions that serve[d] the interests of those in power” (Geary, 2009, p. 69).
C. Wright Mills (1959) advocated the diffusion of the sociological
imagination throughout society. This, he believed, would assist individuals
in achieving a better understanding of and more control over the struc-
tural forces that shape their lives. Rather than understanding their lives in
terms of the local milieu of private troubles, the sociological imagination
would enable them to connect their personal biographies with greater
structural and historical trends (Mills, 1959, p. 8). They would, therefore,
come to understand their ostensibly private troubles as public issues that
extend beyond their personal domain.
In developing a sociology of whistleblowing, I analyze whistleblowing
through the lens of the sociological imagination, which entails considering
it in terms of the private troubles and public issues it generates.
Whistleblowing raises three public issues: first, in exposing unlawful and
unethical conduct in organizations, whistleblowing addresses the public
issue of organizational wrongdoing. Second, the responses of organiza-
tions, governments, and the public to whistleblowers display the structural
issues related to whistleblowing that points to it being a public issue in
itself. Third, whistleblowing may have devastating personal consequences
for the whistleblower and his/her family, friends, and colleagues.
For whistleblowers, whistleblowing can bring more troubles than they
had envisaged and therefore become a private trouble. The whistleblow-
er’s actions are informed by the belief that s/he are engaging in a public
issue: the recognition and exposure of perceived wrongdoing in the work-
place. Whistleblowers are often under the impression that they are acting
in the best interests of the organization. They believe that as loyal employ-
ees, it is part of their responsibility to disclose suspicions of wrongdoing so
that the allegations can be investigated before they escalate and result in
significant harm to the organization’s reputation. The ultimate goal of
whistleblowers is to ensure that wrongdoing ceases. Very soon, however,
they begin to realize that the public issue they are addressing has become
a private trouble as a result of the retaliation they receive in response to
their disclosures. This reality emerges in instances when employers view
the whistleblowers’ revelations as insubordination and disloyal to the
organization, especially when they reveal entrusted information that the
employer does not want to be uncovered (Uys & Senekal, 2008, p. 40).
16 T. UYS

Plan of the Book

Chapter 2 explores various debates regarding the core characteristics of
whistleblowing using the case of Edward Snowden as an illustration. In
particular, it considers the following issues in conceptualizing
whistleblowing:

• the content of the disclosure, drawing a distinction between disclo-

sures about misconduct and disclosures with regard to disagreements
about policy,
• who makes the disclosure,
• whether the disclosure was authorized, unauthorized, or
role-prescribed,
• whether whistleblowers necessarily suffer retaliation,
• the recipient of the disclosure,
• whether the disclosure was made openly or anonymously, and lastly
• whether the disclosure was in the public interest.

Chapter 3 describes the experiences of several South African whistle-

blowers, demonstrating how acting in the public interest could create per-
sonal troubles while exposing public issues of concern. These stories show
how whistleblowing can become a public issue when uncovering struc-
tural problems within organizations and the legal system. The chapter
provides a foundation for the theoretical analysis of whistleblowing as per-
sonal troubles and public issues in the subsequent chapters, where I make
comparisons with the experiences of whistleblowers in other contexts. I
have included the stories from whistleblowers in the public and private
sectors and men and women in selecting the cases.
Chapter 4 deals with factors within the individual biography and the
social setting of the whistleblower that would predispose him/her to blow
the whistle. When confronted with what is perceived to be organizational
wrongdoing, the employee has a number of choices. Employees could
distance themselves from the problem by leaving (exiting) or staying and
keeping quiet. Staying and keeping quiet is often considered to be the
loyal option (especially by the employer). Employees could, however, con-
front the issue by voicing their concerns internally or externally. In consid-
ering how these choices are made, the chapter explores the influence of
the personal characteristics of whistleblowers, their motives, and the role
of social and organizational factors.
 1 WHISTLEBLOWING AND THE SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION 17

Chapter 5 considers organizational responses to the whistleblower’s

actions as well as the impact that this response has on the whistleblower’s
relationships and circumstances, including financial pressures; the impact
on relationships with colleagues, family, and friends; and the effect the
response has on the whistleblower’s mental wellbeing and self-confidence.
The focus is, therefore, on whistleblowing as a personal trouble. Of par-
ticular interest is how the whistleblower’s level of resilience shapes his/her
willingness to blow the whistle and ability to cope with the
consequences.
Chapter 6 looks at whistleblowing as a public issue by exploring the
impact of the whistleblower’s actions and the organizational response on
the organization and the public. The act of whistleblowing generally iden-
tifies severe deficiencies in the structure of an organization. External whis-
tleblowing potentially exposes the inadequacy of the communication
channels in the organization and the failure of management to deal satis-
factorily with the whistleblower’s concerns. Moreover, management and
those accused of wrongdoing have to spend a lot of time doing damage
control and giving explanations of what has happened. Whistleblowers
who consider their actions an expression of loyalty to an organization may
later feel betrayed, given the response to their disclosures. This breakdown
results in distrust of the organization and them no longer recognizing the
organization’s authority. This chapter also considers factors influencing
the organizational reaction, including the role of loyalty, trust, and
reputation.
I then move to ways in which the disclosure of organizational wrong-
doing could be advanced, and the public interest served while minimizing
the possible adverse effects for the whistleblower, the organization, and
broader society. In other words, factors that determine the effectiveness of
whistleblowing. For example, if organizational commitment implies being
loyal to the explicit values and norms of the organization, rather than to
management, colleagues, or protecting the organization’s reputation, per-
ceiving organizational wrongdoing would compel the loyal employee to
blow the whistle.
Institutionalizing the disclosure of wrongdoing requires the creation of
a climate of disclosure through implementing transparent and open com-
munication channels, a flat hierarchical structure, and the promotion of
reciprocal relationships of trust. It requires a corporate environment where
any disclosure will lead to a focus on the message rather than the messen-
ger. It involves assurance of non-victimization to prospective
18 T. UYS

whistleblowers, the implementation of whistleblowing procedures, includ-

ing sanctions against perpetrators of retaliation, the investigation of the
whistleblower’s claims by an independent agency, and the provision of
protection and support to whistleblowers. By implementing such institu-
tional measures effectively, the primary concern of the whistleblower,
namely, that the perceived wrongdoing should be investigated and dealt
with, is addressed. Institutionalizing the authorized disclosure of wrong-
doing also deals with the organization’s concerns about obedience, confi-
dentiality, accountability, and reputation.
Chapter 7 analyzes the effectiveness of legislation in protecting whistle-
blowers against retaliation and encouraging structural measures that pro-
vide organizational support to observers of wrongdoing when making
their disclosures. In addition to protecting whistleblowers against retalia-
tion, legislation also should include measures encouraging organizational
support to all those affected by the disclosure of wrongdoing. If retaliation
does not follow, blowing the whistle will not incur private troubles for the
whistleblower or become a public issue for the organization. Ultimately,
the focus should be on addressing organizational wrongdoing as a public
issue by ensuring that facilitating its exposure results in eradicating orga-
nizational misconduct.
As a conclusion to this application of the sociological imagination to
whistleblowing, Chap. 8 considers the role clinical sociologists and other
practitioners could play in designing and/or implementing interventions
that would ensure better outcomes for the whistleblower, the organiza-
tion, as well as others who are involved. Clinical sociologists attempt to
improve people’s quality of life by designing and/or implementing inter-
ventions based on an analysis of problem situations. In the case of whistle-
blowing, their role could include advising the organization concerning the
implementation of confidential reporting systems that would pre-empt
whistleblowing; developing support systems for whistleblowers before,
during, and after the disclosure is made; mediation between the organiza-
tion and the whistleblower; and advocacy to improve legal protection for
whistleblowers. In this way, the efforts of clinical sociologists enhance the
pursuit of the politics of truth within organizations by resolving the para-
dox of whistleblowing and ensuring the creation of an ethical workplace
where whistleblowers’ actions are viewed in a positive light. In this envi-
ronment, whistleblowers help to eradicate the public issue of wrongdoing
without suffering the private troubles normally associated with their
actions.
 1 WHISTLEBLOWING AND THE SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION 19

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 CHAPTER 2

What Constitutes Whistleblowing?

Introduction
The general view of whistleblowing is that it makes a significant contribu-
tion to combating organizational misconduct. However, the public is
often more ambivalent concerning its perceptions of people who blow the
whistle. Globally there are debates about whether they should be consid-
ered heroes or traitors and what kind of protection they should receive.
Making provision for the idea of whistleblowing in the United States
dates back to the False Claims Act (FCA), promulgated in 1863—the time
of the Civil War. The purpose of the Act was to encourage insiders to
expose fraud against the US government. A crucial element of the Act was
a so-called qui tam clause, which provided a financial reward to the whis-
tleblower if the fraud was confirmed. This legislation was progressive,
years ahead of its time. It, however, remained mostly dormant until the
early 1940s, when large-scale government procurement led to its regen-
eration. Though there were only 28 FCA cases pending across the United
States in 1943, they resulted in investigations of the most powerful corpo-
rations involved in government contracts. Alarmed by these cases, corpo-
rations successfully lobbied for amendments to the Act, resulting in
numerous procedural and substantive obstacles in the way of filing a qui
tam claim. Whistleblowers had to wait another 43 years for the US gov-
ernment’s 1986 repeal of most of the anti-whistleblower provisions of the
1943 Act, which made provision for anti-retaliation protection (Kohn,
2012, pp. 52–58).

© The Author(s) 2022 25

T. Uys, Whistleblowing and the Sociological Imagination,
https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-39445-3_2
26 T. UYS

The first formal use of the term “whistleblower” to denote insiders who
expose organizational wrongdoing occurred during the Conference on
Professional Responsibility organized by Ralph Nader in 1971. The con-
ference report, published as a book called Whistle Blowing, “was the first
extensive treatment of how individuals of integrity reconciled their per-
sonal morality with conflicting institutional responsibilities” (Bollier,
1991, p. 46). Various efforts contributing to the institutionalization of
whistleblowing followed this conference, for example, establishing the
Government Accountability Project (GAP) in 1977 (Bollier, 1991, p. 4).
However, some influential management experts, such as Peter Drucker (in
Orr, 1989, p. 207), still tended to view whistleblowing as “simply another
word for ‘informing’” with the attendant connotations of distrust and
disloyalty.
Since then, public perceptions of whistleblowing in the United States
have changed dramatically. For example, the Time nomination of three
women whistleblowers as Persons of the Year in 2002 revealed a generally
positive view of whistleblowers. However, attempts by the US govern-
ment to close down the WikiLeaks website after it published sensitive gov-
ernment information, and the prosecution of those involved with the leaks
display a more adverse stance towards whistleblowing (Benkler, 2011).
The furor surrounding the hunt for Edward Snowden, the former
National Security Agency employee who leaked information about US
government surveillance programs to the press, demonstrates the con-
tested nature of whistleblowing. Interestingly the character of the debates
on whistleblowing has shifted with Snowden. Louis Clark of the
Government Accountability Project (GAP) in the United States sums up
the change very well: “… it was noticeable that the argument about
Edward Snowden in the US was not over whether whistleblowing is
good—it was about whether he counts as a real whistleblower” (in Smith,
2014, p. 16).
Whistleblowing has become sensationalized in the media, and conse-
quently, it appears in everyday conversation in a range of ways with differ-
ent connotations attached to it, depending on the attitudes and experiences
of the user. Confusion is not limited to everyday life and the general pub-
lic, however. Academics also offer competing conceptualizations. Clarifying
what constitutes whistleblowing is more than a theoretical concern: it
informs various practices and attitudes towards whistleblowing. In partic-
ular, it influences what support and protection those who disclose infor-
mation about perceived organizational wrongdoing would receive.
 2 WHAT CONSTITUTES WHISTLEBLOWING? 27

This chapter explores the definitional debates on whistleblowing, using

the Snowden case as an illustration. In doing so, it is vital to determine the
range of activities contained in the definition correctly. If whistleblowing
is defined too broadly, it becomes everything, and that explains nothing.
On the other hand, if demarcated too narrowly, whistleblowing becomes
trivial. As Ceva and Bocchiolo (2019, p. 21) argue, it is necessary to
formulate

a definition capable of being precise enough to serve the purposes of aca-

demic research and nuanced enough to encompass the many current usages
of the term in the public debate.

A basic premise for scholars and the popular media is that whistleblow-
ing, or “ethical resistance” (Glazer & Glazer, 1989, p. 4) as some authors
refer to it, entails the voluntary disclosure of perceived organizational
wrongdoing to those considered to be in a position to take action (Ceva
& Bocchiola, 2019, p. 24; Glazer & Glazer, 1989, p. 4; Jubb, 1999, p. 83;
Miceli & Near, 1992, p. 15; Miethe, 1999, pp. 17–18; Wilmot, 2000,
p. 1051). This definition points to the involvement of at least three main
social actors in the dynamics of whistleblowing: “… wrongdoer(s) who
commit the alleged wrongdoing; whistleblower(s) who observe the
wrongdoing, define it as such and report it; and recipient(s) of the report
of wrongdoing” (Near & Miceli, 1996, p. 508). In the following sections,
I consider various issues related to a disclosure that would justify its desig-
nation as whistleblowing. The first issue requiring clarification refers to the
kind of disclosure that qualifies as whistleblowing.

Disclosure of Wrongdoing
Most authors distinguish a wide variety of behaviors that constitute orga-
nizational misconduct, for example, criminal activity, the abuse of public
funds and power, a miscarriage of justice, maladministration, and endan-
gering the health or safety of any individual (Kloppers, 1997, pp. 240–241).
In contrast, McLain and Keenan (1999, p. 256) identified characteristics
of the behavior that qualify as wrongdoing as including:

behavior which is morally wrong as well as behavior which is illegal, unethi-

cal, wasteful, inefficient, neglectful, an abuse of power, or violates organiza-
tional rules or professional standards.
28 T. UYS

However, this does not bring us much further, primarily since the list of
characteristics does not refer explicitly to the connection with an organiza-
tion. This omission is remedied by Blonder (2010, p. 258), who defines
organizational misconduct as “non-compliant, wasteful, or illegal Teo and
Caspersz (2011, pp. 239–240) viewed wrongdoing ““as conduct falling
along a spectrum of behaviour, which ranges from serious illegality to
unprofessional or improper behaviour in the workplace.”
The question, however, arises whether a disclosure about any transgres-
sion within an organization would qualify as whistleblowing. Some
researchers distinguish between occupational and organizational wrong-
doing. The former entails specific individuals in the organization engaging
in questionable behavior that falls outside the explicit official corporate
policy boundaries. In contrast, the latter involves suspicious workplace
behavior that is widespread and institutionalized in the organization
(Bjørkelo et al., 2008, p. 31).
Jubb (1999, pp. 87–88) excluded disclosures about professional mis-
conduct from the definition of whistleblowing. To qualify as whistleblow-
ing, he argued, the disclosures should deal with illegal, immoral, or
unethical activities that the organization is accountable for, which are under
its control, and could result in actual or potential harm. Organizational
wrongdoing could, therefore, be seen as a failure of the corporate gover-
nance of an organization, the inability to ensure that the organization is
controlled and directed in a way that protects the interests of all stakehold-
ers and, in particular, the organization’s reputation or symbolic capital
(Rossouw, 2005, p. 101). The disclosure aims to prevent, impede, or end
the wrongdoing so that uninformed members of the public are protected
by terminating, limiting, or averting actual or potential harm.
While the inclusion of disclosures about organizational misconduct in
the definition of whistleblowing seems fairly clear-cut and justifiable, we
need to consider those cases where whistleblowers make disclosures about
disagreements with corporate policy. These disagreements could include
inadequate accountability structures in the organization, or actions that
comply with regulations but involve unwarranted risks or do not conform
to proper standards (Blonder, 2010, p. 258). Arguably the revelations by
Edward Snowden about the nature and extent of US surveillance pro-
grams implemented both domestically and internationally constituted an
example of a policy disclosure. Yet, this type of exposure, which represents
dissent from general organizational views, is often not considered whistle-
blowing. This view is the basis on which Richard Haass, president of the
Council of Foreign Relations, argued that Snowden was not a
 2 WHAT CONSTITUTES WHISTLEBLOWING? 29

whistleblower as his disclosures dealt with policy issues and did not reveal
evidence of corruption (Farrington, 2013).
Organizations often use these kinds of tactics to discredit whistleblow-
ers or tarnish the message they are trying to put across. However, subse-
quent events have demonstrated that Snowden’s disclosures did reveal
organizational wrongdoing. For example, in 2015, the British Investigatory
Powers Tribunal, tasked with reviewing complaints against the British
security services, ruled that before Snowden’s disclosures made the poli-
cies public, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ)
and the NSA’s bulk interception of electronic communications had been
unlawful (Nyst, 2015). The US Court of Appeals came to a similar conclu-
sion in 2020 (BBC News). Attempts to deny Snowden the status of being
a whistleblower by arguing that his disclosures did not fall into the nar-
rowly defined parameters of providing evidence of illegality have therefore
proved to be spurious.
Bushnell (2020) emphasizes the importance of considering the cultural
context within which the wrongdoing occurs. Perceptions of what consti-
tutes organizational wrongdoing are the result of a process of meaning-­
making influenced by the “cultural and societal values and the changing
cultural landscape within which whistleblowers are encompassed”
(Bushnell, 2020, p. 9).

Who Makes the Disclosure?

Some authors cast a wide net in considering any individual who raises
concerns about perceived organizational wrongdoing of a whistleblower
(Martin, 2010, p. 12). This view implies that virtually anybody who dis-
closes corporate wrongdoing would qualify as a whistleblower ranging
from a member of the public reporting pollution by an organization to the
police, or phoning a crime line, to the activities of an investigative journal-
ist publishing an article about bribes accepted by government officials.
However, most whistleblowing research employs a much more
restricted definition. Initially, the general agreement was that a current or
former employee should disclose organizational wrongdoing of the orga-
nization involved (Calland & Dehn, 2004, p. 3; Glazer & Glazer, 1989,
p. 4; Miethe, 1999, p. 13; Singer et al., 1998, p. 528; Wilmot, 2000,
p. 1051). For example, De Maria (1999, p. 26) even excluded former
employees from the definition of whistleblowing as he argued that they
usually were not in danger of suffering from management reprisals. This
30 T. UYS

view, of course, neglected to take into account the possible negative impact
that blacklisting by the former employer could have on the whistleblow-
er’s future career.
In terms of South African labor law, an employee is someone who pro-
vides services or works for another person or entity where at least one of
several factors is present. First, another person controls or directs the indi-
vidual work activities or his/her hours of work. Second, the person forms
part of the organization he/she is working for. A third factor is whether
the average hours of work over the preceding three months exceeded 40
hours per month. The law also considers individuals as employees if they
are economically dependent on another person, provide services only to
one person, or are given the equipment needed to execute the work by the
other person (Jackson, n.d.).
However, limiting the ranks of whistleblowers to current or former
employees has proved to be too restrictive. It excludes disclosures by peo-
ple not employed by the organization but linked to it in other ways, such
as consultants, independent contractors, volunteers, or shareholders.
Blonder (2010, p. 258) argues for a broader scope by including “people
in some category of labor relationship to an organization,” while several
authors (e.g. Johnson, 2003, p. 4; Miceli et al., 2008, p. 6) define a whis-
tleblower as a member or former member of an organization, rather than
an employee. Therefore, a whistleblower is an insider “who has or had
privileged access to data or information of an organization” (Jubb, 1999,
p. 83). Anvari et al. (2019, p. 44) go one step further by arguing that
whistleblowing reports must be about ingroup wrongdoing made by
someone who, to some degree, identifies with the group through a subjec-
tive definition of group membership. This broader definition allows char-
acterizing Snowden as a whistleblower, even though he made his
disclosures as a National Security Agency contractor rather than as an
employee.
If a reporter or politician makes disclosures about organizational mis-
conduct happening outside of their particular work sphere, this does not
qualify them as a whistleblower. This view is in line with de Maria’s (1999,
p. 26) argument that a disclosure constitutes whistleblowing only if the
person making the disclosure observed or experienced the wrongdoing
directly.
Whistleblowers are insiders who reveal information that was entrusted
to them (Davis, 2003, p. 543). This position exposes them to the accusa-
tion of betrayal, someone who has violated loyalty and trust (Ben-Yehuda,
 2 WHAT CONSTITUTES WHISTLEBLOWING? 31

2001, p. 37). Issues of loyalty and trust are related to whether disclosures
need to be unauthorized to qualify as whistleblowing or whether autho-
rized or role-prescribed disclosures are also included in the definition.

Whether the Disclosure Was Authorized,

Unauthorized, or Role-Prescribed
While some researchers included any disclosure of organizational wrong-
doing, whether sanctioned by the organization or not, in their definition
of whistleblowing (Alford, 2001, p. 18; Johnson, 2003, p. 4; Miceli &
Near, 1992, p. 16), others believed that whistleblowing should be
restricted to the unauthorized disclosure of information (Hunt, 1998,
p. 525; Glazer & Glazer, 1989, p. 4; Vinten, 1994, p. 5). Blonder (2010,
p. 258) argues that whistleblowing involves disclosures where “the
employee typically does not have the approval of his or her superior to
report the misconduct.” This view seems to limit whistleblowing to
bureaucratically unauthorized forms of disclosure. It is mostly the unoffi-
cial nature of the whistleblower’s disclosure that exposes him or her to the
accusation of treachery.
The question is what determines whether a disclosure is unauthorized.
According to Geoffrey Hunt (1998, p. 530), three main criteria deter-
mine whether a disclosure is designated as unauthorized. The first is obvi-
ously when the employee did not follow the prescribed organizational
communication channels when making the disclosure. Second, the disclo-
sure could be considered unsanctioned if the information is particularly
sensitive, especially where secrecy clauses or issues of confidentiality are
involved. Third, the organization’s management might believe that the
particular employee is insufficiently senior to make such a disclosure.
The authorization of disclosure is mostly a result of whether the domi-
nant organizational culture condones this behavior. Organizational cul-
ture refers to a collective framework of assumptions, beliefs, values, and
behavioral norms that influences the decisions and conduct of members of
the organization (Greenberg & Baron, 2003, p. 515; Werner, 2011,
p. 31). Organizational culture mainly influences behavior in organizations
through furnishing employees with a sense of identity, engendering a
commitment to the mission of the organization, and informing and
strengthening organizational norms (Greenberg & Baron, 2003, p. 518).
It plays a particularly important role in distinguishing between desired and
32 T. UYS

deviant behaviors and, therefore, in determining whether a disclosure

should be perceived to be authorized or not. In Snowden’s statement to
the European Parliament, he described what Werner (2011, p. 38) consid-
ers a passive-defensive culture, one that “reinforces normative beliefs asso-
ciated with approval, traditional rules, dependence and avoidance”. He
received two kinds of responses from his colleagues and superiors when
raising his concerns about what he perceived to be an unconstitutional and
illegal surveillance program conducted by the NSA. The first warned
against the retaliation that could follow from upsetting the status quo,
while the second advised that the issue should be left to someone else to
solve (Snowden, 2019, p. 235).
Defining whistleblowing as making an unauthorized disclosure seems
to exclude so-called role-prescribed whistleblowing where your job
description obliges you to make disclosures about perceived wrongdoing
(Miceli et al., 2008, p. 139), as is the case with internal auditors. For
Blonder (2010, p. 258), role reporting is just the standard way in which
members of organizations behave, while Miethe (1999, p. 17) argues that
one should distinguish between disclosures which form part of the stan-
dard requirements in such a function and those cases where the revelations
occur outside the prescribed channels. Only the latter would qualify as
whistleblowing as the former would not lead to the same kind of victim-
ization experienced by those who make unauthorized disclosures. Anvari
et al. (2019, p. 45) argue that the qualifying condition is whether the
reporting of problematic behavior took place voluntarily.
Supervisors sometimes consider even role-prescribed disclosures where
the organizational member followed the prescribed channels, to be unau-
thorized, and retaliate against the person making the disclosure. As the
distinction between authorized and unauthorized disclosures is ambigu-
ous, I suggest that any disclosures of organizational wrongdoing that flow
from performing a particular role in an organization (including evidence
given in court if the witness is under a legal duty to answer) should be
viewed as whistleblowing. The previous discussion has introduced the
question of whether suffering retaliation as a result of making a disclosure
is a prerequisite for being considered a whistleblower.
 2 WHAT CONSTITUTES WHISTLEBLOWING? 33

Do Whistleblowers Necessarily Suffer Retaliation?

De Maria (1999, p. 25) was adamant that the retaliation following a dis-
closure about organizational wrongdoing is an essential requirement to be
considered a whistleblower. Similarly, Miethe (1999, p. 17) disqualified
role reporting that follows the prescribed channels from being viewed as
whistleblowing as “they do not experience the same antagonism and con-
demnation for reporting misconduct.” While Miceli and her colleagues
(2008, pp. 11–16) extensively describe retaliation against whistleblowers,
they stop short of making it a prerequisite to be considered a whistle-
blower. Brown & Donkin (2008, p. 13) argue that making retaliation a
requirement for classifying a disclosure as a case of whistleblowing would
render all attempts to provide proactive protection for whistleblowers
moot. For Alford (2001, p. 18), this is a practical issue. Theoretically,
anybody who raises concerns about organizational wrongdoing is a whis-
tleblower, but in practice, only those who experience retaliation from the
organization are identified as such.

Who Is the Recipient of the Disclosure?

The Distinction Between Internal, External,
and Public Whistleblowing

To qualify as whistleblowing, the disclosure should be made to someone

or some agency perceived to have the ability to effect change. Authors
generally distinguish between two kinds of channels that are available to
prospective whistleblowers. Disclosures could occur internally when the
whistleblower communicates the message inside the organization using
prescribed or non-prescribed channels. Whistleblowers also could resort
to an external agency when they raise their concerns with some external
authority. Some authors (such as Jubb, 1999, p. 91) restrict whistleblow-
ing to disclosures external to the organization as “internal disclosure does
not breach the organization’s confidences, nor violate its proprietary
rights to the information released; and it is dubious whether the act is
organizational disobedience” (Jubb, 1999, p. 91). However, some orga-
nizations victimize those who make their disclosures internally only, forc-
ing them to escalate their exposures externally (Uys, 2008). Research has
shown that there is little difference in the retaliation experienced by inter-
nal and external whistleblowers (Alford, 2001, p. 129; Miceli et al.,
2008, p. 7).
34 T. UYS

Miceli et al. (2008, pp. 7–11) argued that rather than excluding inter-
nal disclosures of wrongdoing from the definition of whistleblowing, we
should consider “internal and external whistleblowing to be two types of
one broad class of behavior.” In both instances, whistleblowers make their
disclosures because they are not themselves in a position to investigate or
otherwise deal with the perceived wrongdoing (Miethe, 1999, p. 15).
Having made an internal disclosure often compels the whistleblower to go
the external route, either because of the inaction of the organization in
dealing with the report or because retaliation by the organization forces
them to take the matter further.
Some researchers consider it essential to distinguish whistleblowing
from run-of-the-mill discussions about misconduct or critical remarks that
form part of regular work activity. Apart from raising the threshold for
what is considered whistleblowing, Skiveness and Trygstad (2010,
pp. 1077–1078) also distinguish between weak and strong whistleblow-
ing. Weak whistleblowing refers to the initial raising of concerns about
perceived wrongdoing to someone within the organization who is in a
position to deal with the matter. If no response is forthcoming, which
requires that the organizational member has to report the concern inter-
nally again, the disclosure becomes strong whistleblowing. Those mem-
bers who engage in strong whistleblowing to someone outside the
organization are called external whistleblowers.
Initially, researchers distinguished only between internal and external
whistleblowing. However, the extreme response to whistleblowers who
raise their concerns in the media has necessitated a further distinction.
Therefore, Vandekerckhove (2010, pp. 17–18) developed a three-tier
model of whistleblowing. While the first tier refers to internal whistle-
blowing, the second tier entails external whistleblowing to a prescribed
regulator. At the level of the third tier, disclosures are made publicly, par-
ticularly to the media.
Generally, legislation protecting whistleblowers requires that whistle-
blowers exhaust internal routes before turning to ways of exposing the
wrongdoing externally. As a contractor, Snowden was not protected by
President Obama’s 2012 Presidential Policy Directive 19 that dealt with
intelligence agency employees. He was, however, still questioned whether
he felt he had exhausted all internal avenues before going public (Snowden,
2019, p. 241).
With the founding of WikiLeaks in 2006, another avenue for raising
concerns opened to prospective whistleblowers. While some researchers
 2 WHAT CONSTITUTES WHISTLEBLOWING? 35

(Lozano et al., 2010–2011; Madar, 2012) refer to WikiLeaks as an “exter-

nal whistleblower,” it is argued here that WikiLeaks should instead be
viewed as a channel for disclosure that observers of organizational wrong-
doing could employ.1

Should the Disclosure Be Made Openly, or Do

Anonymous Disclosures Also Qualify
as Whistleblowing?

Technological developments concerning the information revolution have

expanded the ability of whistleblowers to remain anonymous when mak-
ing disclosures. The question is whether a whistleblowing disclosure made
anonymously could still be considered whistleblowing, or should a disclo-
sure always occur openly to qualify?
De Maria (1999, p. 28) insisted that suspicions of organizational
wrongdoing should be exposed openly to qualify as whistleblowing as
open disclosures will require protection, while anonymous reporting does
not. Similarly, when comparing whistleblowing to civil disobedience, Bok
(1980, p. 281) argued that they were both equally open, by stating that
whistleblowing “differs from the anonymous warning as much as civil dis-
obedience differs from covert breaches of the law.” She was especially con-
cerned about the unfairness inherent in “the secret denunciation or the
leaked rumor: the more so the more derogatory and accusatory the infor-
mation. What is openly stated can more easily be checked, its source’s
motives challenged, and the underlying information examined” (Bok,
1980, p. 286).
Flynn (2006, p. 257) contrasts whistleblowing, where the identity of
the person disclosing wrongdoing is revealed, with leaking, which refers to
covert disclosures of unauthorized information placed in the public
domain by a journalistic intermediary. This distinction is problematic for
two main reasons. First, constructing the core distinguishing characteristic
as the anonymity of the disclosers makes it inherently unstable as their
identity could be revealed at any stage, transforming their status from
leaker to whistleblower in an instant. The disclosure of Snowden’s identity

1
While never particularly popular in US government circles, WikiLeaks encountered its full
wrath after it released more than 700,000 classified American diplomatic cables and military
reports it had received from a US Army soldier, Army Pfc. Bradley Manning in November
2010 (Berghel, 2012).
36 T. UYS

soon after the first report appeared in The Guardian is a case in point.
Second, and more importantly, as the public debate on the status of
Edward Snowden demonstrates, “leaker” is a loaded term with deroga-
tory connotations (see, e.g. Eyal Press, 2013; Goldman, 2013; Vingiano,
2013; Wemple, 2013; Williams, 2013). Even before Snowden’s disclo-
sures, Sirota (2012) argued that while whistleblowers and leakers both
disclose critical information about wrongdoing, leakers do so with self-­
interested political goals in mind and not to bring the wrongdoing to an
end. Calling someone who discloses information about wrongdoing
anonymously a leaker, therefore, disparages the action. Snowden (2019,
pp. 236–237) is adamant about the distinction when he argues that
leaking:

should be used to describe acts of disclosure done not out of public interest
but out of self-interest, or in pursuit of institutional or political aims. To be
more precise, I understand a leak as something closer to a “plant,” or an
incidence of “propaganda-seeding”: the selective release of protected infor-
mation in order to sway popular opinion or affect the course of deci-
sion making.

Similarly, Santoro and Kumar (2018, p. 47) locate the purpose of the
leaker’s disclosure in a desire “to manipulate, misguide, or influence pub-
lic opinion to serve a particular interest,” whereas whistleblowers try to
serve the public interest through their revelations.
In contrast to the requirement for open disclosures, many researchers
make provision for anonymous whistleblowing, provided that the disclo-
sure somehow appears in the public domain (Alford, 2001, p. 36; Jubb,
1999, p. 79; Miceli et al., 2008, p. 8; Miethe, 1999, pp. 81–82; Nan,
2011, p. 85). While acknowledging that anonymous whistleblowing tends
to be less effective, Elliston (1982, pp. 170–170) furnishes several justifi-
cations for making disclosures about wrongdoing anonymously, in par-
ticular the seriousness of the wrongdoing, the likelihood of unfair
retaliation, and the social distance between the whistleblower and the
accused. According to Elliston (1982, p. 175), the primary consideration
is the extent to which anonymous whistleblowing is required to promote
public welfare and safety, as well as honesty and accountability among
management.
The acceptance of anonymous whistleblowing has opened the door for
the implementation of anonymous hotlines and the establishment of
 2 WHAT CONSTITUTES WHISTLEBLOWING? 37

whistleblowing procedures that allow for concerns to be raised anony-

mously. On the other hand, making provision for anonymous whistle-
blowing creates the possibility of confusing the role of whistleblowers with
the activities of informers. While initiatives such as South Africa’s anony-
mous crime tip-off line, CrimeLine; the Public Service Commission
National Anti-Corruption Hotline; and the Legacy Lifestyle and 5FM ini-
tiative Blow the Whistle on Rape are laudable, marketing them as whistle-
blowing tends to blur the distinction between whistleblowing and
informing in the eyes of the general public. Clarifying this distinction is of
particular importance in countries such as South Africa, where the role of
informers has strong historical connotations with betrayal and disloyalty.
Disconnecting whistleblowing from informing is of particular impor-
tance where informing resonates with a political history of domination
and oppression, particularly where those in power received the informa-
tion to be used against a repressed general public. The role of impimpis
who betrayed the struggle against the apartheid regime in South Africa by
informing on their associates to the police and security structures, created
a negative perception of disclosures about perceived wrongdoing. This
negative perception exists regardless of the nature of the wrongdoing or
the recipient of the exposure (Uys, 2010, p. 122). The term “informers”
(or informants as they are sometimes known) generally refers to individu-
als who secretively provide privileged information about a person or orga-
nization to some state agency, usually the police, the army, the judiciary,
or the security services (Dudai, 2012, p. 34). The anonymous nature of
the disclosure, as well as the financial or other benefits that informers stand
to gain from their actions, ensures that community perceptions of inform-
ers are generally negative. In his analysis of the role of informers in the
transition in Northern Ireland, Dudai (2012) demonstrated the enduring
hostility towards and resentment of informers.
German history also illustrates the negative impact of equating whistle-
blowing with informing. The Gestapo and Stasi relied on denunciations
by friends and colleagues. This memory tended to thwart discussion of
protection for whistleblowers, as whistleblowers were viewed in the same
light as these earlier informers (Strack, 2011, p. 109). Navasky (1980)
describes the social costs of the intense feelings of betrayal engendered by
the professional informers used during the McCarthy period in the United
States to unmask supposed Communists. In China, the memories of the
Cultural Revolution when citizens denounced their neighbors, children,
their parents, and students their teachers still scupper attempts to promote
38 T. UYS

anonymous whistleblowing hotlines (Martens & Crowell, 2006, p. 104).

De Maria (1999, pp. 30–31) described the damage to cohesion and soli-
darity caused by “dobbing” in Australia, the practice of anonymous
reporting of perceived wrongdoing to state agencies. Similarly, during the
time of apartheid, the South African police and security structures made
use of so-called impimpis, whose betrayal of the struggle against apartheid
was often punished by “necklacing” them (a tire filled with fuel was placed
around their necks and set alight) (Uys, 2010, pp. 122–123).
These examples accentuate the importance of making a clear distinction
between informers and whistleblowers. Haglunds (209: 47–48) equates
informers with the pentiti, the Mafia defectors, who inform on the illicit
organization they belong to by naming names, in contrast to whistleblow-
ers who reveal wrongdoing in legitimate organizations. The fundamental
difference lies in what Near and Miceli (1996, p. 510) call whistleblowers’
“reasonable supposition of success” of terminating the wrongdoing
through their disclosures. In contrast, the covert way in which informers
reveal information show little regard for the purposes for which the recipi-
ent requires the information.
Another critical distinction between whistleblowing and informing
relates to differences in power relations. De Maria (1999, p. 32) puts it
succinctly:

[Informing] is the powerless reporting to the powerful on the misdeeds of

the powerless. Whistleblowing, on the other hand, is the powerless disclos-
ing the misconduct of the powerful.

Informers, therefore, promote the interests of the powerful, often receiv-

ing a reward of some kind, while whistleblowers raise concerns about ille-
gal, unethical, or dangerous practices of the powerful. In contrast to
informers who are the, sometimes unwilling, lackeys of the powerful,
whistleblowers voluntarily attempt to restrain the abuse of power. While
informers disclose information to support those in power, whistleblowers
make disclosures that challenge those in power. As the speakers of truth to
power, whistleblowers disrupt the status quo and generally find themselves
at the losing end as the playing fields are never level.
Another random document with
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The Project Gutenberg eBook of A világegyetem

élete és megismerésének története a legrégibb

időtől napjainkig
 This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United
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eBook.

Title: A világegyetem élete és megismerésének története a

legrégibb időtől napjainkig

Author: Svante Arrhenius

Translator: Gyula Polgár

Release date: May 27, 2022 [eBook #68183]

Language: Hungarian

Original publication: Hungary: Franklin, 1914

Credits: Albert László from page images generously made

available by the Library of the Hungarian Academy of
Sciences

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A

VILÁGEGYETEM ÉLETE ÉS MEGISMERÉSÉNEK TÖRTÉNETE A
LEGRÉGIBB IDŐTŐL NAPJAINKIG ***
 Megjegyzés:
A tartalomjegyzék a 237. oldalon található.
 KULTURA és TUDOMÁNY

A VILÁGEGYETEM ÉLETE

IRTA SVANTE ARRHENIUS

FORDITOTTA Dr POLGÁR GYULA

BUDAPEST

FRANKLIN-TÁRSULAT
MAGYAR IROD. INTÉZET ÉS KÖNYVNYOMDA

1914

A VILÁGEGYETEM ÉLETE
ÉS MEGISMERÉSÉNEK TÖRTÉNETE

A LEGRÉGIBB IDŐTŐL NAPJAINKIG

 IRTA

SVANTE ARRHENIUS
A STOCKHOLMI FIZIKAI ÉS KÉMIAI NOBEL-INTÉZET IGAZGATÓJA

FORDITOTTA

Dr POLGÁR GYULA

BUDAPEST

FRANKLIN-TÁRSULAT
MAGYAR IROD. INTÉZET ÉS KÖNYVNYOMDA

1914
FRANKLIN-TÁRSULAT NYOMDÁJA.
 A SZERZŐ ELŐSZAVA.

«A világok keletkezése» című munkámat oly nagy jóakarattal

fogadták, hogy azt eléggé meg nem köszönhetem. Ennek egyik
következménye volt az is, hogy úgy ismerősök, mint ismeretlenek a
legkülönbözőbb kérdésekkel fordultak hozzám. E kérdések gyakran
azon különböző nézetek helyességére vonatkoztak, amelyek a
világegyetem szerkezetéről régebben általánosabbak voltak, mint
ma. Ez a dolog és más körülmények arra késztettek, hogy a
kozmogóniai eszmék történeti fejlődését az ókortól Newton idejéig
tanulmányozzam. E tanulmány számomra oly érdekes volt, hogy azt
hiszem, a közönség is szívesen fog arról tudomást szerezni, hogy az
e kérdésre vonatkozó nézetek hogy fejlődtek ki a természeti népek
naiv és összefüggéstelen képzelődéseiből napjaink nagyszerű
gondolatrendszerévé. «Csak fejlődésükben ismerhetők meg a
dolgok», mondja Haeckel. És ha e mondásban bizonyos túlzás is
van, – nem szükséges pl. a modern kémia megértéséhez az
alkimisták összes fantáziáinak ismerete – mégsem cáfolható meg,
hogy az elmult idők gondolkodásmódjának tanulmányozása nagy
mértékben hozzájárul saját időnk nézeteinek megértéséhez.
A legérdekesebb bizonyára az a tény, hogy mai felfogásunk
csírája már a legrégibb és a legtökéletlenebb nézetekben
kimutatható.
E tanulmány nagy megelégedésünkre is szolgál, amennyiben azt
látjuk, hogy napjainkban a fejlődés hallatlanul rohamos. Mintegy
százezer éven át az emberiség szellemileg téli álomba merülten élt
és egy téren sem ért el többet, mint ma a legkevésbbé fejlett
természeti nép. Azon nem egészen tízezer év alatt, ameddig tartott
az úgynevezett kultur-népek kifejlődése, a haladás kétségtelenül
sokkal nagyobb volt, mint az emberiség történelem előtti korában.
Azon nagy kulturális visszaesés dacára, ami a középkort jellemzi,
mégis bizonyossággal állíthatjuk, hogy az utolsó ezer év
jelentékenyen messzebbre vitt bennünket, mint az egész megelőző
történeti idő. És végül Laplace és Herschel Vilmosnak a
világkeletkezésre vonatkozó nagyjelentőségű munkái mellett is,
amelyeket több mint száz év előtt alkottak meg, állíthatjuk, hogy az
utolsó száz év többet adott nékünk e téren, mint a közvetlenül
megelőző kilencszáz. Már csak a mechanikai hőelmélet alkalmazása
legalább annyi fényt derített a problemánkra, mint a megelőző
kutatások és ha még hozzászámítjuk a tudásnak azon nagyszerű
területét, amelyet a szpektroszkop használata nyitott meg
számunkra és végül a melegsugárzás törvényeinek, a fénynyomás
és a gazdag energiájú radioaktiv testek tanának felhasználása, úgy
a mérleg kétségtelenül mélyen az utolsó évszázad javára billen.
Összehasonlításunkban persze most oly időhöz érünk, amely sokkal
közelebb van, mintsem, hogy teljes bizonyossággal összemérhetnők
a megelőzővel, de én mégis azt hiszem, hogy egy természettudós
sem fogja kétségbevonni, hogy a természet megismerésében soha
azelőtt oly gyorsan nem haladtunk előre, mint épen napjainkban.
Ha azonban azt kérdezzük, hogy volt lehetséges a
természettudomány haladásának ily nagyszerű fokozása (különösen
a világprobléma megoldására való felhasználás terén), úgy a felelet
erre körülbelül a következő: A kultura hajnalodása idején az
emberek kis törzsekben éltek, amelyek a családból fejlődtek ki. A
nagy külvilágra vonatkozó egész tapasztalat, amelyre egy-egy
elkülönített törzs önmagában szert tehetett, nem ölthetett nagyobb
terjedelmet. A törzs legintelligensebb embere felhasználta azt, hogy
a többiek vezetését átvegye. Csak a legközelebbi barátok és
rokonoknak volt szabad betekintést nyerni azon tudományba,
amelyen alapult az ő felsőbbsége. E kincsnek nemzedékről
nemzedékre való növelése csak rendkívül lassan történhetett. A
viszonyok nagyban javultak, amidőn a törzsek előnyösebbnek
találták, hogy államokká egyesüljenek. A tudományban jártasok
aránylag nagy papi szervezetbe tömörültek, amely kétségtelenül
valóságos iskolákban nevelte fel és az őskor bölcsességébe
bevezette azokat, akik körükbe léptek. Eközben a kultura is annyira
előrehaladt, hogy a tapasztalat eredményeinek írásba foglalása vált
lehetségessé. De az írás igen fáradságos volt, tehát csak kevés
írásbeli feljegyzést eszközöltek, amelyet gondosan őriztek a
templomokban. A papok tudáskincse ily módon aránylag gyorsan
növekedett, de csak elenyésző kis része szivárgott a nép közé,
amely különben is a tudásban valami természetfölöttit látott. Ez alatt
azonban nagyszerű haladás történt. Valószínűleg az egyiptomi
papok vitték a legmesszebbre, akik bölcseségük jórészét
kétségtelenül tovább adták a görög természetbölcselőknek. A
virágzás nagyszerű kora állt be, amelyet annál inkább kell
csodálnunk, mivel utána mély hanyatlás következett. Az iratok nem
maradtak tovább a templom papjai alkotta hatalmas kaszt
kizárólagos szellemi tulajdonában, hanem a laikusok közt is
terjesztették azokat, habár csakis a leggazdagabb osztályban. A
rabszolgáknak nem volt szabad a kultura szellemi haladását
élvezniök, ha néhány tanult rabszolgatól eltekintünk, pl. a
könyvmásolóktól, holott a görög és római államban virágzásuk ideje
alatt rabszolgák alkották a túlnyomó többséget. Különösen károsan
hatott az a nézet, hogy a kézimunka és ennek következtében a
kisérletező munka is a szabad emberhez nem méltó és csak
rabszolgához illő. A természetkutatás súlyos kárt szenvedett azután
az egyik aténi bölcsészeti iskolának a természet tanulmányozásától
elforduló irányzata folytán, amely iskolának tanait még azonfelül a
keresztény egyház gondozói átvették és csaknem napjainkig a
kulturát megakasztó befolyást fejtettek ki. A szomorú hanyatlás ideje
az újkor elejéig, az emberiség ujjáébredéséig tartott. E kor a
könyvnyomtatást állította a tudomány szolgálatába és a kisérleti
munka megvetése eltünt a művelt ember felfogásából. De lassan
ment a dolog eleinte, a régi előítéletek ellenállása folytán és a
különböző kutatók együttműködésének hiánya folytán. Ezen
akadályok azóta eltüntek és egyúttal gyorsan növekedett a
természettudomány munkásainak száma és segédeszközeik
tömege. Innen van a legutóbbi idő nagyszerű haladása.
Némelyek azt mondják, hogy mi a «legjobb világban» élünk,
efelől aligha mondhatunk valami alapos véleményt, de – legalább mi
természetbúvárok – egész biztosan állíthatjuk, hogy a legjobb
időben élünk. Azon biztos reményben, hogy a jövő csak jobb lehet,
elmondhatjuk a nagy természet- és emberismerővel, Goethe-vel:

«Es ist ein gross’ Ergötzen,

Sich in den Geist der Zeiten zu versetzen,
Zu schauen, wie vor uns ein weiser Mann gedacht,
Und wie, wir’s dann zuletzt so herrlich weit gebracht.»
 I.

A PRIMITIV NÉPEK MONDÁI A VILÁG

KELETKEZÉSÉRŐL.

A fejlődés legalsóbb fokán álló népek csak a mának élnek. Ami

holnap történhet és ami tegnap történt, amennyiben nem függ össze
közvetlenül a hétköznapi gondokkal, nem érdekli őket. A
világegyetemről, vagy annak fejlődéséről való bárminő elmélkedéstől
ép oly távol állanak, mint attól a gondolattól, hogy vajjon régen
milyen lehetett a föld. A földnek egymástól távol eső részein találunk
ilyen alsórendű néptörzseket. Igy pl. Brinton dr. az északamerikai
Jeges-tenger partján élő eszkimókról azt mondja, hogy sohasem
gondolkoztak a világ keletkezéséről. Épp oly kevéssé törődnek – úgy
látszik – a világ keletkezésével az abiponok egykor harcias, most
azonban békeszerető indián törzse Santa-Fében, Argentiniában és a
délafrikai busmannok.
Egyes vidékeken azonban, ahol nem túlságos kemény a létért
való küzdelem, korán bukkanunk a föld és későbben az ég
keletkezésének kérdésére, vagyis más szóval, a földfeletti dolgok
kérdésére. Általában antropomorfikus fogalmat alkotnak a világ
kezdetéről, vagyis fölveszik, hogy valaminő élőlény hozta létre. Ezen
lénynek valamelyes anyag állott rendelkezésére, amiből kialakította
a világot. Hogy a világot semmiből teremtették, az úgy látszik,
általában nem az eredeti felfogás, hanem az absztrakció magasabb
fokát kivánja.1) Ez úgy látszik indus filozófusoktól ered és ezt találjuk
Brahmának (a szellemnek) mondájában, aki gondolata segítségével
teremtette az ősvizet, valamint a perzsa-izmaelita legendában a
végtelen, megnevezhetetlen lényről, amelyből a világ hat
periódusban támadt. Azon nézetet, hogy az anyag valamely
anyagtalanból származhat akarati aktus, parancs, avagy gondolat
segítségével, joggal «természetfölöttinek», vagy
«természetellenesnek» mondhatjuk. Amint az a természetkutatás
mai álláspontjának ellentmond, amely szerint az anyag mennyisége
változatlan, ép oly kevéssé egyeztethető össze az ősnépek primitiv
tapasztalataival, amiket környezetükben gyűjtöttek. Azért is találjuk a
legtöbb esetben, hogy az anyag örökkévalóságának fogalma
mélyebb alapon nyugszik, mint azon vélemény, hogy a teremtő Isten
léte végtelen. A világok alkotóját rendszerint úgy képzelik, hogy az
maga is az ősanyagból keletkezett. Nagyobb fokú
következetességet természetesen nem szabad elvárnunk ezen első
kísérleteknél, amelyekben fogalmat alkotni igyekeztek a világ
keletkezéséről. Azonban ne hagyjuk tekinteten kívül, hogy a
legrégibb felfogásban inkább találjuk meg az evolució elméletének
csíráját (a világprocesszus természetes fejlődésének elméletét,
amely fejlődés ismert és mindig érvényesülő természeti erők
hatására történik), mint valamely metafizikai teremtési elméletben;
ez utóbbi t. i. az evolució elméletével szemben természetfölötti erők
beavatkozását tételezi fel és ép ezért természettudományi kutatás
tárgyát nem is képezheti.
Herbert Spencer a nagy filozófus úgy határozza meg az evolució
fogalmát, hogy: «az evolució azon változás, mely akkor jön létre,
midőn egyenlőtlenségből egyenlőség, bizonytalanságból
bizonyosság és rendetlenségből rend keletkezik.»
Ezen meghatározás, mely különben nem kifogástalan –
különösen a molekulák mozgását illetőleg – teljesen megfelel a világ
fejlődéséről alkotott első fogalmaknak; ezen fogalmak, hála a Kant–
Laplace-féle elmélet általános elismerésének, napjainkig mérvadók
voltak. Általában a vizet tartották őselemnek, amely alaktalan, rend
nélküli és teljesen egyenletes. Régi tapasztalat, hogy a termékeny
iszapot árvizek rakják le. Ebből azt következtették, hogy az egész
föld a víz lerakodása. Talesz is azt állítja (körülbelül 550 évvel a mi
időszámításunk előtt), hogy mindennek kezdete a víz. Valószínűleg
már korán tapasztalták, hogyha az edényből kiforr a víz, földszerű
kéreg marad vissza, amely a víz által feloldott sókat és iszapos,
kemény anyagrészecskéket tartalmaz.
Ezen felfogás igazolásául szolgáljon egy indus mitosz, amely a
világ keletkezéséről szól. Az egyiptomi, kaldeusi és finn hasonló
tárgyú mondák később következnek. A Rig-Véda 10. könyvének
129. hímnusza így szól:

Nem volt még lét, se nemlét,

Se lég, se ég fölötte.
Mi moccant meg és hol? Ki volt, ki mozgatott?
Víz volt az, ami a mélységet megtöltötte?

Nem volt halál és nem volt örök élet,

Nem változott még nap és éj.
A Névtelen susogott csöndesen, önmagát fentartva,
Semmi sem volt kívüle.

Homály volt itt, és homályba burkolva

Formátlan víz volt a világ.
A világ az űrbe rejtve volt,
De belső tüze élt.

A vágy volt az, ami először megmozdult,

A mindenségnek első csírája;
A kutató bölcsek látták,
Lét és nemlét rokon.

De ki az, aki az ősvilág mondáit mondaná?

Ki ismeri, a világ miként állt elő?
Nem voltak akkor istenek.
Ki mondhatná el azt, mit senkisem látott?

Honnan eredt e világ,

Isteni kéz alkotta-e, vagy sem,
Az égben van, ki tudja ezt,
Ha ugyan tudja Ő.

Ezen mélyértelmű, gyönyörű himnusz nem állítható egy sorba

primitív népek mondáival, hanem igen magas fejlődési stádiumnak
felel meg. Azonban a himnuszban említett ősvíz, mint minden dolog
kezdetének képzete, valószínűleg mélyen benne gyökeredzett az
indus nép legrégibb felfogásában.
Igen jellemző azon felfogás, melyet igen sok a teremtésre
vonatkozó mitoszban találunk (többek között a kaldeusi és a vele
rokon héberben, valamint a görögben is), t. i., hogy a sötétség,
vagyis az éjjel valami létező, holott az csak a világosság hiánya. A
«nemlét»-et a «lét» rokonának tekintik, holott ellentétek. E nézet
kétségtelenül azon felfogáson alapult, hogy a teljes, egyenletes
kaoszban semmiféle tárgyat sem lehet megkülönböztetni, tehát
nincs is tárgy.
A rendezetlen állapotot mint törvényt rendszerint a görög kaosz
szóval jelölik, amely azt jelenti, hogy az alaktalan anyag mindenütt
egyenletesen van elosztva. Még Kant is abból indul ki
kozmogóniájában, hogy a világ kezdetben anyagi részek teljesen
egyenletes káosza volt. Az ősállapotot néha az őséter kifejezéssel
jellemzik. Így a japán teremtési mitosz: «Ős időkben, mondja, midőn
ég és föld nem volt még egymástól elválasztva, csakis őséter volt,
olyan keverék, amely tojáshoz hasonlított. A világos rész, mivel
könnyebb volt, fölfelé szállt, ez lett az ég; a nehéz homályos rész
beleesett a vízbe és föld lett.» Egy más japán monda szerint,
amelyet Tylor ismertetett, a föld eredetileg oly sűrű volt, mint a sár,
vagy mint az olaj, amely úszik a vizen. «Ekkor kivált tömegéből a
nőszirom, vagy a káka, amelyet Azi-nak nevezünk, ebből
kiemelkedett a földet alkotó isten.»
Az élő természet megfigyelése, midőn élő szervezet látszólag
élettelen magból, vagy tojásból keletkezik, gyakran adott alapot azon
föltevésre, hogy a tojásnak fontos szerepe volt a világ
keletkezésénél. E felfogás ép úgy megvan a japán mondákban, mint
az Indiából, Khínából, Polinéziából, Finnországból, Egyiptomból és
Főniciából eredő elbeszélésekben. A világ teremtéséről szóló
mondák közül, amelyekben egy vagy több tojás játsza a legnagyobb
szerepet a világ keletkezésében, a legismertebb és legjobban
kidolgozott a finn. Aránylag műveletlen finn néptörzsek elbeszélései
szerint jegyezték fel e mondát, amely törzsek Oroszország
Archangelszk kormányzóságának területén laknak. Ezen monda
szerint «Ilmatar, a természet egyik szűz leánya» a kék űrben
lebegett és a tenger hullámaira szállott alá. Tehát kezdettől fogva
volt tenger, fölötte a kék űr, valamint Ilmatar, aki a természettől
származott. Ez megegyezik az ősnépek rendes felfogásával.
Már 700 év óta lebegett Ilmatar a vihartól ringatva a hullámokon.
Ekkor átröpül a vizen egy vadkacsa és helyet keres, hogy fölépítse
fészkét. Ilmatar kiemeli térdét a vízből és a vadkacsa hat arany és
egy vas tojást rak az ölébe. A madár két napig ült a tojásokon, ekkor
Ilmatar megmozdult és a tojások a mélységbe estek. (A következő
rész Barna Ferdinánd fordításából van véve.)

A tojások összetörtek,
Darabokra repedeztek.
A tojások nem jutának
Sárba részei nem hullának;
Töredéki váltak jóra
Gyönyörü szép darabokra:
A tojásnak alsó fele
Alsó anyafölddé leve,
A tojásnak felső része
Elváltozék felső égre,
Sárgájának felső szine
Váltott nappá fenn sütnie,
Fejérének felső része
Ez meg holddá derengnie
A tojásban mi tarka volt
Csillaggá vált s égen ragyog
Mi fekete vala benne
Felhő lett a levegőbe.

Erre Ilmatar kilépett a tengerből, szigeteket, hegyeket és

dombokat teremtett és azután Wäinämöinen-t szűlte, a halhatatlan
énekest, a szél fiát. Wäinämöinen örült a nap és hold fényének, de
fájlalja, hogy nincs a földön növényzet. Ekkor a földmívelés
istenéhez fordul, Pellervoinenhez, aki a mezőkön magvakat hint
szét. A mezőket erre élénk zöld borítja el és fák kezdenek nőni.
Végül a tölgyfa oly magasra nő, hogy az emberek előtt elsötétül a
nap és a hold, azért le kell dönteni. Mint látjuk, az elbeszélés
folyamán istenek, emberek, állatok és növények szerepelnek,
anélkül, hogy megjelölnék, honnét jönnek. Ez jellemző a mitoszokra,
de ritkán találhatjuk oly határozottan kifejezve, mint a finn
legendában. Valószínű, hogy a Kalevala különböző részeit
átdolgozták; azonban a világ keletkezésének mondáját nem
dolgozták át kritikailag. Vagyis más szóval: e mondákban a
természet gyermekeinek poézise nyilvánul meg, nem pedig a
bölcselkedő világot átölelő elmélkedése.
«Az eredeti kozmogóniák», amint E. G. Hirsch megjegyzi, a nép
fantáziájának önként nyilvánuló alkotásai és ép azért
rendszertelenek; rendesen nem egyebek, mint a teogonia egy
fejezete, vagyis az istenek származásának elbeszélései.»
Különböző népek mondáiban nagy szerep jut a vízözön-
mondáknak, amelyekkel sokat foglalkoztak a természettudósok. A
legismertebb a bibliában leírt vízözön, amely oly magasan borította
el a földet, hogy a legmagasabb hegyek is 15 rőfnyire voltak a víz
felszíne alatt. Miután a hetvenes években egy asszir ékírással írott,
egészen hasonló tartalmú elbeszélést találtak, amelyben a hős Szit-
napisztimt (a babiloniak Xizusztroszát) említik, fölvették, hogy a
zsidó legenda asszír forrásból merített. A héber szöveg azt mondja:
«vízözönt fogok létrehozni a tengerből», Suessnek, a kiváló
geológusnak (1883) az a nézete, hogy e vízözönt vulkanikus
kitörésből eredő árhullám okozta; ezen árhullám a Perzsa öbölből
kiindulva áthullámzott a mezopotámiai alföldön.
J. Riem nem kevesebb, mint hatvannyolc vízözön-mondát
gyűjtött össze különböző népeknél, amely mondák úgy látszik
függetlenek egymástól. Ezek közül csak négy vonatkozik
európaiakra és pedig Deukalion és Pyrrha görög mondája, az Edda
elbeszélése, a litvánok és az Oroszország északkeleti részén lakó
vogulok mondái. Afrikából 5, Ázsiából 13, Ausztrália- és Polinéziából
9, Észak- és Délamerikából 37 monda ismeretes. A négereknél, a
kaffereknél, és az araboknál hasonló mondákat nem ismerünk. A
vízözönt különböző népek különböző módon okolják meg. Szerintük
nagy hó- és jégtömegek olvadása (Skandinávia), eső (Assziria),
havazás (Montagnais-indiánok), az égboltozat beomlása a támasztó
pillérek leszakadása folytán (Khína), a vízisten bosszúja (Társaság-
szigetek), stb. volt az ok. Több esetben megemlítik, hogy a vízözön
többször is megismétlődött. Így Platon Timaioszában azt állítja, hogy
egy egyiptomi pap szerint a vízözön bizonyos periodusokban
visszatér.
Rendesen azt hiszik, hogy a teremtés folyamata csak a
rendezetlen anyag elrendezése, még pedig a legtöbb esetben úgy,
hogy a földtől elválik az ősvíz, vagyis a tenger. A Csendes-oceán
szigetein néhány primitiv törzs azt hiszi, hogy a földet kihalászták a
tengerből. Közelfekvő volt a gondolat, hogy a megelőző rendezetlen
állapot okául többször megismétlődött vízözönt vegyenek föl. A nem
árja származású szantalok például olyasmit képzelnek.
Ez megegyezik néhány modern kutató állításával, t. i., hogy a
föld emberlakta része el fog pusztulni, hogy később új élet hordozója
legyen. A primitiv népek szerint a tűz, vagy a víz, a szél (néha az
istenek haragja) pusztítja el a földet, azután újra fejlődik, úgy, hogy
újra lakhelye lehet élőlényeknek. Ez a változás állítólag többször
megtörtént. Ezen messze elterjedt felfogást legjobban az indus
mondák fejezik ki (a Purana könyveiben) és a buddhista filozófia,
amelyre még visszatérünk.
A világ ujjászületésének tana össze van keverve a lélekvándorlás
népszerű tanával, amellyel ezen összefüggésben nem foglalkozunk.
A régi északamerikai indiánusok mitoszai bizonyos szempontból
érdekesek. Ámbár föltételezhetjük, hogy az óvilág közreműködése
nélkül jöttek létre, mondáik mégis föltünően hasonlítanak a
mieinkhez, csakhogy az amerikai mondákban fontosabb szerepe
van az állatoknak. Az északamerikai indiánok, mint a vadásznépek
legtöbbje, az állatokat magukhoz hasonlóknak tartják. A teremtőnek,
szerintük, föld vagy agyag állott rendelkezésére. A földet többnyire a
vízből kiváltnak mondják. A legegyszerűbb felfogás szerint egy kis
tengeri sziget fokozatos növekedése által keletkezett a világ.
Jellemző, hogy a takuliak Brit-Kolumbiában azt hiszik, hogy
kezdetben nem létezett más, mint víz és pézsmahód. A pézsmahód
a tenger fenekén kereste táplálékát. Közben iszap gyült össze
szájában, amit kiköpött, ebből az iszapból sziget támadt, a melyből
mindjobban kifejlődött a szárazföld. Még különösebb az irokézek
véleménye, szerintük az égből ledobtak egy istennőt, aki egy a
tengerben úszó teknősbékára esett, amely megnagyobbodva
képezte a szárazföldet. Nyilvánvaló, hogy a teknősbéka megfelel az
előbbi monda kis óceáni szigetének, az istennő lezuhanása csak
megindította a fejlődést. A tinneh-indiánusoknak az volt a
véleménye, hogy egy kutyának a testét, amely szép ifjúvá tudott
átalakulni, óriások széttépték és ezen testrészekből keletkeztek a
világon létező dolgok. Sok primitiv népnél akadunk a világ
keletkezésére vonatkozó mondáikban azon hitre, hogy a világ
emberi vagy állati testrészekből keletkezett. Néha, mint pl. a
winnebago-indiánusoknál, Kitchi Manitu (a nagy szellem) a teremtő
saját testrészeiből és földből alakítja ki az első embert. Ezen monda,
amely élénken emlékeztet a zsidók Ádám teremtésének mondájára,
már határozottan eleve föltételezi, hogy a föld kezdettől fogva
megvolt. Ugyancsak azt tételezik föl a navajo-indiánok, a digger-
indiánok és Guatemala ősnépeinek szájhagyományai.
Ausztrália bennszülöttei a legalsóbbrendű fajhoz tartoznak. Ezek,
úgylátszik, nem gondolkoztak a világ kezdetén. Náluk úgy, mint a
legtöbb műveletlen népnél, az ég semmi egyéb, mint szilárd boltozat
a föld síma lapján. A wotjobaluk-törzs azt hiszi, hogy az ég eleinte
erősen rá volt szorítva a földre. A nap emiatt nem tudott a kettő
között mozogni, mozgási szabadságát csak az által érte el, hogy egy
szarka hosszú bot segítségével fölemelte az eget a földről. Ezen
fölötte naiv elbeszélés élénken emlékeztet egy régi egyiptomi
mondára, amelyről később lesz szó.
Mindezen példákból láthatjuk, hogy minő szoros,
elválaszthatatlan az összefüggés a világ szerkezetéről alkotott ősi
fogalmak és a vallási fogalmak között. A vadember mindent, ami
mozog, mindent, aminek hatása van, akarattal bíró lélekkel ruház föl.
Animizmus e felfogás neve. «Ha a folyam, miként az ember él, akkor
akaratától függ, hogy áldást hoz-e öntözésével, vagy pedig
pusztulást okoz-e majd heves árjával. Tehát szükséges, hogy
megengeszteljék, hogy jót míveljen vizével, vagy hogy rávegyék,
hogy ne pusztítson hullámaival.»
A primitiv ember varázslattal igyekszik befolyásolni a hatalmas
szellemet. A varázslat oly tudomány, amelyet kizárólag a beavatott
papok vagy kuruzslók foglaltak le a maguk számára, más halandó
előtt el volt zárva. Míg mi a természet jelenségeinek felderítésével
keressük azon eszközöket, amelyekkel a természet erőit
kihasználhatjuk, addig a primitiv nép varázslattal igyekszik azokat
megnyerni. Bizonyos tekintetben tehát a mágia a
természettudományok előfutára és a mondák, amelyek a varázslat
kifejtésének alapjai, megfelelnek némely tekintetben
természettudományi elméleteinknek. Így Andrew Lang a következőt
mondja: «A mitoszok épp úgy alapulnak föltevéseken nyugvó primitiv
tudományon, mint primitiv vallásos fogalmakon.» Könnyen érthető,
hogy ezen föltevés sokszor a hétköznapi megfigyelésekből ered és
gyakran nem is oly nehéz eltalálni, mely észrevételek érvényesültek
benne. Néha a véletlennek is jutott némi szerep. A hagyomány
megőrizte barbár idők mondáit a magasabb civilizáció idejéig. A
mondákat az időközben fokozott műveltség és belátás dacára sem
alakították át, mert tisztelték az ősöktől öröklött hitet. Ez határozottan
kitünik Heziodusz és Ovidiusz kozmogóniai magyarázataiból,
amelyekre a következő fejezetben visszatérünk.
Gyakran más befolyás is érvényesül. A primitiv népek mondáit
többnyire nagymíveltségű egyének jegyzik fel. Így a nép egyszerű
elbeszéléseit önkéntelenül is saját felfogásuk szerint szinezik. Ez
annál inkább is így van, mivel a mondákban határozott
következetesség nincs; a gyűjtő azonban könnyen kísértésbe kerül,
hogy azt belevigye. Ez különösen akkor történhet, ha a gyüjtő
fajrokonság vagy más oknál fogva jóindulattal elfogult az ősnéppel
szemben. Ily esetben az elbeszélés gyönyörű hőskölteménnyé
válhat, amelynek alapjai a primitiv néptől átvett elemek.
Természetesen máskép áll a dolog, ha írott emlékek maradnak.
Hogy azonban irott emlék létre jöhessen, ahhoz a műveltség elég
magas foka szükséges és akkor már nem igen állíthatjuk, hogy az
primitiv néptől ered. Azért azon kozmogónikus eszméket, amelyek