Perspectives on privacy: a sociological analysis

Abstract

The thesis is concerned to locate and account for the occurrence of privacy, given that we appear unsure how to conceptualize and recognize privacy, vague about. what makes privacy culturally available, ignorant about the course of that availability within our own society, and reluctant to be specific about which contextual factors influence. whether and when privacy is likely to obtain. Using theoretical, historical, and analytical perspectives... the aim is to clarify the interplay between 'privacy practices and features of social organization. The data are culled from a wide range of sources (anthropological,. architectural, fictional, historical, legal, medical, philosophical, political, psychological and sociological), that have, not hitherto been brought together.

In the first of the theoretical chapters privacy is identified as 'when access between persons and. contextual outsiders is intentionally and acceptably restricted'. This interactionist version. - arising out of dissatisfactions with how existing formulations encapsulate the phenomenon and/or the world - seeks both to pinpoint the distinctiveness of privacy and to allow for the variability. once geared to thinking of privacy as problematic,. Chapter Two investigates the cultural availability of privacy. The notion of privacy as a by-product of modernity is rejected but recognition of privacy as a. viable option is found to depend-on a modicum of differentiation between people and between spheres of activity.

The historical section provides a case study of the incidence and concomitants of privacy in Britain. Chapter Three explores developments up to about 1700. when privacy was entering the social repertoire. Chapter Four details the expansion of opportunities for privacy, particularly domestically, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Chapter Five characterizes the nature of privacy concerns, in terms of their locus, strength, diffusion, association with societal changes, and twentieth century fortunes.

The analytical perspectives examine how different contextual particulars contribute-to thepatterning of privacy aspirations and outcomes. Chapter Six considers privacy as the prerogative or obligation of 'persons' and investigates the social distribution of privacy preferences and achievements. Chapter Seven discusses where boundaries between 'insiders' and 'outsiders' are normatively drawn, depending on the activity or information at issue and in accordance with the structural and affective. properties of pertinent relationships. The final chapter assesses the impact of physical factors, before reviewing the study's conclusion about the social contingency of privacy and the usefulness of the proposed definition.

Indications of the quantity and quality. of the available evidence are given throughout and an extensive bibliography gives a guide to the topic of privacy. The appendix lists over two hundred definitions of privacy.