[109730] in Cypherpunks
[RRE]Social Construction of Privacy
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Robert Hettinga)
Fri Apr 2 20:06:14 1999
Date: Fri, 2 Apr 1999 19:49:03 -0500
To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
From: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>
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Subject: [RRE]Social Construction of Privacy
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Date: Fri, 02 Apr 1999 17:36:01 -0500
From: Rob Kling <kling@indiana.edu>
Subject: Social Construction of Privacy: The Information Society
Letter from Rob Kling
Editor-in-Chief
For TIS Issue 14(4)
This issue of The Information Society, 14(4), includes a special
section about the Social Construction of Privacy that organized and
edited by by Dr. Christine Hine and Prof. James Katz. It also includes
a new feature for The Information Society -- a section devoted to
Review Essays - as well as two Forum articles and two book reviews.
The Social Construction of Privacy section includes three articles
that examine the ways that people formulate privacy issues in their
daily lives. In the opening article, "Privacy in the Marketplace,"
Christine Hine and Juliet Eve report on study of the views of UK
consumers views' of the collection and use of personal information by
commercial organizations in connection with shopping. Their informants
could not identify any single type of information, such as age,
that counted as personal in all situations. Rather, they formulated
a view of "privacy infringements" that depended upon the situation.
Hine and Eve found that "situated privacy" depended upon: the
visibility of a mediating technology; the perceived legitimacy of
information requests; the representation of intrusion or disruption
of legitimate activity; perceived imbalances of power and control;
and representations of the social context. By focusing on the daily
activity -- shopping - instead of asking direct questions about
privacy, they found that privacy concerns were rarely independently
raised by their informants as an important feature in making decisions
about purchasing. However, most of their informants were cognizant
about uses and misuses of personal information when they were asked
about privacy issues in relation to shopping.
"The Distribution of Privacy Risks: Who Needs Protection?" by Charles
D. Raab and Colin J. Bennett examines the what should know, do know,
and can learn about the risks of privacy privacy problems. They
examine whether and how these risks can be measured, and how they vary
across social groups and the sectors in which personal data are used.
They argue that systematic knowledge about these risks is critical for
understanding the societal effects of information technology. Systems
will remain deficient, and we will have limited abilities to make and
implement policies for privacy protection, that enable more equitable
distributions of risk and protection. Their article examines
conventional paradigms in data protection, including the standard
procedural view that treats individuals alike as abstract 'data
subjects.' Raab and Bennett argue that, in practice, this view helps
to legitimate extensive surveillance systems. They formulate a
socially richer view of people as situated in specific human contexts,
and differentiated (at minimum) by such categories as their age,
gender, ethnicity and social roles. They examine several privacy
surveys and the ways in which perceptions of risk varies with personal
characteristics such as these. For example, low-income low-education
and minority racial groups have keener concerns about privacy risks
than do better-educated and middle class respondents. The article ends
by examining some theoretical issues of risk, and raises questions
about the objectivity and perception in assessing the risks of privacy
invasion.
In the last privacy article, "Places and Spaces: The Historical
Interaction of Technology, Home, and Privacy," Stuart Shapiro examines
shifting view of public and private behavior in our homelives. Like
Raab and Bennett, he is interested in enriching the conventional
conceptions of data users, data subjects and fixed norms about privacy
issues. His historical account reaches back to medieval Europe where
there was much less of a boundary between the public and private than
in contemporary societies. His analysis contrasts privacy norms across
time, and also across places (ie., England versus New England). He
explores how different technologies, including structural elements,
have affected and reflected over time the boundary represented
by the home and how that boundary has helped shape the construction
of privacy in the West. This illustrates how privacy can be
conceptualized as a social condition arising from the interaction of
various boundaries, including the principal one separating the public
and the private.
This issue includes two Forum articles. The Forum is a section of The
Information Society devoted to "position statements." These articles
can take strong points of view, and need not be argued with the same
scholarly support as normal articles. They are also normally shorter
than normal article (usually up to 4,000 words). Last, they differ
from op-ed article because they can (and often do) include footnotes
and citations.
In the first Forum article, "The Meaning of the Web" Jim Falk argues
that understanding the meaning of the Internet challenges many of
the categories within which we have grown used to thinking about the
shape and meaning of society and its future. For individuals and local
communities, the promises, hopes and fears associated with the growth
of the web have particular poignancy as they face the challenge of
establishing and asserting their identity in a ever more complicated
and interdependent world, and through that, finding a strategy
for achieving the sort of future they would like to live. Falk
examines the traditional theoretical tools which we have available
to understand these issues. He addresses some of the central
difficulties and possibilities in re-thinking identity, exploring the
new promising cultural potential of the Internet in a more integrated
and simultaneously fragmenting world.
In the second Forum article, "Information Access in Africa: Problems
with Every Channel," William Wresch argues that every information
channel within Africa is restricted relative to industrial societies.
In his bleak assessment, he observes that African television stations
produce few of their own shows and fill airtime with relatively
inexpensive American imports, even though they advance cultural values
that often conflict with local cultural values. Book production is
also limited by costs that are high relative to the incomes of most
Africans. Unfortunately the Internet does not seem to be a promising
alternative since relatively high phone charges limit people's network
access.
This issue of The Information Society inaugurates a new format, the
Review Essay which is an integrated analytical review of a closely
related set of books. This issue's Review Essay by Felix Stalder
examines the monumental work of Manuel Castells's trilogy, The
Information Age. (Stalder's review is available on-line at
http://www.slis.indiana.edu/TIS/tismat1.html).
This issue ends with the review of two books ---Milton Mueller's
Universal Service: Competition, Interconnection, and Monopoly in the
Making of the American Telephone System and Carl Couch's Information
Technologies and Social Orders.
Please check our Indiana University-Bloomington web site
(www.slis.indiana.edu/TIS) for news on forthcoming issues, calls for
papers, and abstracts of articles from previous issues.
Prospective authors may reach us via email at tisj@indiana.edu.
The Information Society publishes articles in a variety of genres,
including scholarly studies, position statements, interpretive/
perspective articles, book reviews and integrated book review
essays. We are interested in a broad range of topics (see
http://www.slis.indiana.edu/TIS/tistopic.html). We are also
interested in proposals for special issues.
....
TABLE OF CONTENTS -- Volume 14, Number 4
Special Section: Social Construction of Privacy
Guest editors: Christine Hine and James Katz
Privacy in the Marketplace, by Christine Hine and
Juliet Eve
The Distribution of Privacy Risks: Who Needs Protection?,
by Charles D. Raab and Colin J. Bennett
Places and Spaces: The Historical Interaction of Technology,
Home, and Privacy, by Stuart Shapiro
Forum:
The Meaning of the Web, by Jim Falk
Information Access in Africa: Problems with Every Channel, by
William Wresch
Review Essay:
The Network Paradigm: Social Formations in the Age of
Information,
by Felix Stalder
Review of Manuel
Castells. The Information Age: Economy, Society and
Culture, Vols. I-III
Book reviews:
Milton L. Mueller, Jr. Universal Service: Competition,
Interconnection, and Monopoly in the Making of the
American Telephone System, (by Harmeet Sawhney)
Carl J. Couch. Information Technologies and Social
Orders, by (Mary E. Virnoche)
----
Rob Kling
http://www.slis.indiana.edu/kling
The Information Society (journal) http://www.slis.indiana.edu/TIS
Center for Social Informatics http://www.slis.indiana.edu/CSI
Indiana University
1320 E 10th Street, Room 005C
Bloomington, IN 47405-3907 812-855-9763 // Fax: 855-6166
Read & contribute to the ....
Social Informatics Home Page --> http://www.slis.indiana.edu/SI
a resource about research, teaching, conferences & journals
Read:
"What is Social Informatics and Why Does it Matter?"
D-Lib Magazine January 1999 Volume 5 Number 1
at http://www.dlib.org:80/dlib/january99/kling/01kling.html
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-----------------
Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@philodox.com>
Philodox Financial Technology Evangelism <http://www.philodox.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
