Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
email: denise.anthony@dartmouth.edu
2
Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53211;
email: camposca@uwm.edu
3
Department of Sociology, Washington State University, Pullman, Washington 99163;
email: chorne@wsu.edu
249
SO43CH12-Anthony ARI 20 July 2017 13:53
INTRODUCTION
What are, and what should be, the boundaries between self and society, individuals and groups?
Answers to these questions have varied over time and across cultures. In hunter-gatherer soci-
eties families lived, slept, and conducted intimate activities (like having sex) within common living
spaces. In emerging industrial societies, poor families crowded together in tenements, and soli-
tude and quiet contemplation were considered luxuries for only the most learned and wealthy.
Changes in architecture and technologies have also affected these boundaries. The postcard and
party telephone lines enhanced opportunities for communication but also for eavesdropping by
mail carriers and neighbors. Photographic and wire-tapping technologies facilitated the moni-
toring of crime but also raised concerns about the role of media, other corporate actors, and the
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nation-state in surveillance activities. Such tensions highlight the centrality of privacy for complex
questions about the connections between self and others in interpersonal relationships and in the
broader community, as well as the role of personal information in maintaining orderly and just
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societies. Privacy concerns draw attention to the appropriate balance between centralized moni-
toring systems and individual well-being in healthy societies, between disclosure and concealment
of personal information in cohesive relationships, and between power and fairness in markets,
governments, and communities.
Recent innovations in information and communications technologies (ICTs), including the
increased availability of ubiquitous wireless devices and networks, inexpensive sensors, Big Data
analysis tools, and massive data storage, have made privacy a topic of increasing concern for
citizens, governments, businesses, and academics (e.g., Nippert-Eng 2010, Nissenbaum 2010,
Podesta et al. 2014, Rule 2007, Solove 2008). These technologies enable connections among
actors and facilitate the monitoring of individuals by multiple institutions and across multiple
spaces and interactions. Information about people is collected as they move throughout their day,
stored in long-term shareable databases, and is aggregated, analyzed, and disseminated. In this
age of ubiquitous ICTs, it is clichéd to say that privacy is dead. However, while it is true that
new technologies have created an unprecedented set of privacy challenges, people across cultures
and time periods have always sought to manage privacy (e.g., Altman 1977, Moore 1984, Murphy
1964, Roberts & Gregor 1971, Shils 1966, Westin 1970, Zureik et al. 2010).
Similarly, academic attention to privacy has a long history, although there is no recognized sin-
gle literature on privacy. Instead, privacy expertise spans multiple academic disciplines, including
law, anthropology, psychology, philosophy, political science, computer science, and criminology.
In sociology, the study of privacy occurs within multiple subdisciplines that do not always converse
with one another. In this review, we synthesize the research on privacy that is relevant for the
foundational sociological issues of social order and inequality, without attempting to cover the
vast multidisciplinary literature on privacy. We include work that, for the most part, has been
conducted by sociologists or published in sociology outlets. However, because privacy research
occurs in disparate fields, readers will also see citations of scholars in other disciplines when their
work addresses the sociological questions that are the focus here. By synthesizing work on a nar-
row yet fundamental set of issues, we aim to increase our understanding of privacy and to provide
a foundation for analyzing the contemporary privacy issues associated with ICTs.
We begin by clarifying our definitions of privacy and associated concepts. We then describe
the intersections between privacy and social order. We explore the role of privacy and monitoring
in maintaining control, a key element of social order. We also look at social order in terms
of the tensions between disclosure and concealment in cohesive relationships and communities.
We then discuss privacy and inequality, exploring how existing inequality produces variation in
privacy and how this variation in turn contributes to inequality. Throughout the review, we identify
DEFINING PRIVACY
Partly because of its interdisciplinary nature, privacy can be conceptualized in many ways (e.g.,
Margulis 1977, 2003). We define privacy as the access of one actor (individual, group, or orga-
nization) to another. Access is a potentially valuable resource. It includes, but is not limited to,
access to information (Shils 1966, Wilsnack 1980) as well as the way information is used. Access
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varies across multiple dimensions, including level (e.g., amount), type (e.g., face-to-face, online),
and content (e.g., medical diagnosis, credit history). Defining privacy as access of one actor to
another means that privacy refers to what people conceal and reveal and what others acquire and
ignore.
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Privacy is affected by a range of factors. Laws define the contents, levels, and types of access that
are legal and illegal. Social practices, such as levels of supervision or interaction patterns, also shape
accessibility (e.g., Acquisti et al. 2015, Anthony et al. 2007, Donath & boyd 2004, Nippert-Eng
2010). Technology—ranging from simple architectural elements such as doors or office cubicles
(e.g., Saval 2014) to complex smart technologies and systems such as social media platforms, smart
meters, wearable sensors, and driverless cars—affects ease of access and structures who has access
to whom, as well as the possibilities for storage, aggregation, manipulation, and dissemination of
personal information. Privacy norms may also affect access (Nissenbaum 2010).
Privacy norms identify the characteristics of access that are deemed appropriate within a con-
text. For example, privacy norms allow observing strangers’ nearly naked bodies at the beach but
not through a neighbor’s bedroom window. Similarly, privacy norms discourage taking and dis-
seminating pictures of a roommate’s sexual behavior but encourage taking and sharing pictures of
newborns—although there is much debate as to whether the dissemination of personal informa-
tion via social media sites should be viewed as appropriate or not (e.g., boyd & Hargittai 2010).
Thus, violations of privacy norms include levels of access that are too high or too low, access
to the wrong kind of information, access through inappropriate channels, and inappropriate use
of information. When privacy norms are followed, people feel that they have privacy (see Bates
1964 for a discussion of the feeling of privacy; also Nippert-Eng 2010). When norms are violated,
individuals may feel invaded or isolated, or they may feel that another actor is being too secretive
or exposing too much. In addition, individuals may have their own privacy preferences; that is,
they may prefer broader, stricter, or different modes of access than norms dictate (Acquisti et al.
2015, Nippert-Eng 2010).
Privacy norms vary depending on a variety of contextual factors (Bates 1964, Horne et al.
2015, Nissenbaum 2010), including the characteristics of the recipient, the relationships between
the actors involved, the purpose of the access (e.g., benefits to the subject, collectors, or group),
and the way information is used (e.g., collected, stored, aggregated, analyzed, and disseminated).
Privacy norms are affected by aspects of the broader environment—for example, demands the
group imposes on the individual (Moore 1984), the level of threat in a society (Brooks & Manza
2013), laws (Solove 2008), the “surveillant assemblage” of the state and corporations (Haggerty
& Ericson 2000), and physical infrastructures and technologies in general (Nissenbaum 2010).
Societal changes, such as the recent uptake of ICTs, have the potential to spur a renegotiation of
privacy norms across contexts. Laws typically cannot keep pace with rapid technological changes
and so are less able to regulate behavior during such periods (Cate 1997, Pasquale 2015, Podesta
et al. 2014, Solove 2008).
Privacy management is an actor’s control over access to the self as well as the ability to access
others. For organizations, this includes managing levels of organizational transparency as well
as seeking information about employees and other actors. Although the ability to manage both
aspects of privacy is necessary for interaction and the maintenance of social order, contemporary
concerns about privacy typically focus on limiting access to the self only. Our conceptualization
of management as the actor’s ability to regulate access to the self and others highlights the problem
of determining the appropriate balance of giving and seeking information. According to this view,
privacy management is the actors’ effort to achieve such a balance by complying with privacy
norms and ensuring that others do not violate those norms, as well as implementing their own
privacy preferences. Thus, privacy management is more than simply limiting access to the self; it
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involves a range of strategies for regulating access to the self and others that intersect with social
norms and actors’ preferences and structural positions.
Privacy, privacy norms, and privacy management have implications for social order, and order is
fundamental to functioning societies. Social order refers to the extent to which members of a social
group cooperate to achieve collective ends (Hechter & Horne 2009). Privacy and social order are
interconnected, in large part because visibility (a key component of access) is thought to be key to
social control: Violations can only be punished if others are aware the violation occurred (Hechter
1987; see also Coser 1961). In addition, individuals who are aware of being monitored may control
their behaviors (Foucault 1979, Waldo et al. 2007). High levels of monitoring, however, can have
negative effects, and particularly if they violate privacy norms, they may lead to resistance and
backlash. Thus, achieving social order requires managing privacy in a way that allows for an
optimal balance between revealing and concealing (Simmel 1950, p. 361; see also Etzioni 1999,
Shils 1956). Below we describe contexts in which monitoring facilitates control as well as situations
in which monitoring leads to resistance and backlash.
Like individuals, governments have always sought to collect information to ensure compliance
with relevant rules (Beniger 1986). In addition to relying on direct observation and reports from
informants and undercover agents, governments use technology to collect information about
suspects. In the past, such tools aimed at monitoring behavior in the home (or business) included
wiretaps, telephone records, and utility records. Now, popular technologies include recordings
of behavior in public places and even greater capture of communications. Governments justify
the monitoring of communications with the need to fight terrorism (Brooks & Manza 2013), and
the recording of behavior with the need to increase safety and security. Yet, evidence for the
effectiveness of increased monitoring to enhance security is mixed (e.g., Goold et al. 2013, Welsh
& Farrington 2009). Security forces appear not to change their practices to take full advantage
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of the information they collect (Goold 2004), and doing so may be very expensive. For example,
it took 100 officers four days to review tapes of London’s underground in an attempt to identify
the attackers in a suicide bombing (Doyle et al. 2012, p. 7). Similarly, a report by London’s
Metropolitan Police found that it takes 1,000 public cameras to catch one criminal (Bennett et al.
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2014, p. 32). Despite a lack of evidence of their effectiveness and the significant costs of using
them, technological surveillance tools are increasingly popular with governments (Doyle et al.
2012, Hier 2010).
Monitoring also occurs in organizations. In the workplace, employers have an interest in watch-
ing employees to protect company assets, control public communication, and ensure that em-
ployees are as productive as possible (Attewell 1987, Ball 2010). UK Nissan, for example, traces
problems to work teams and individuals and gives weekly scores to each individual (Sewell 1998,
Sewell & Wilkinson 1992). When employers monitor, employees know that flaws in production
or service delivery can be traced back to them and lead to potential sanctions (e.g., withhold-
ing raises or bonuses, firing). Organizations may also harness the power of social pressure. For
example, trucking companies may post performance data where workers can see them, creat-
ing social pressure from peers and even families for low-performing workers to improve (Levy
2015).
However, although monitoring may enable employers or governments to appropriately sanc-
tion individuals, it can also lead to punishments that are poorly calibrated to the severity of the
deviance. For example, a substantial body of research shows that felony convictions and criminal
records generally disadvantage job applicants (Pager 2003, 2007). Something as minor as a single
arrest that was never prosecuted can create a disadvantage (Uggen et al. 2014). The fact that
records are permanent and easy to obtain potentially punishes people far beyond what their initial
deviant behavior warranted. Increase in storage and search capacities means that arrest records are
now easily available, and thus a tempting source of information. Records of possible past crimes
are not always accurate, however, and as such, employers may encounter information that is sug-
gestive rather than factual. For example, research shows that when employers search online for
background information about potential employees, they are more likely to come across insinu-
ations of criminal records for racial and ethnic minority candidates, even when such records do
not exist (Sweeney 2013). There is no consistency in how employers use this kind of information
(Lageson et al. 2015).
In addition, increased information about others’ deviance may paradoxically increase the likeli-
hood of future deviant behavior. Evidence suggests, for example, that visible deviance is contagious
(Diekmann et al. 2015) and undermines existing rules (Keizer et al. 2008), whereas ignorance of
violations maintains norms (Kitts 2003, Ostrom 1990). Such research suggests that privacy main-
tains ignorance about the extent to which individuals are engaging in deviant behavior, thereby
upholding social norms: “No doubt, a publication of all of the sins, crimes, and errors that take
place in a social unit would jeopardize its stability” (Schwartz 1968, p. 744).
In summary, research on social control suggests that although institutions may decide to install
new technologies due to their relatively low cost, they may not use them effectively. Moreover,
although monitoring may increase control and compliance, it may also produce unanticipated
consequences such as normalizing deviance and weakening the association between the seriousness
of a deviant act and the severity of the punishment. Thus, monitoring is not always commensurate
with its returns to compliance.
2006; Marx 2003, 2009), thereby disrupting rather than maintaining social order. Although there
is generally little organized resistance to contemporary surveillance in the United States (Huey
2010), individuals frequently resent what they view as privacy violations (Nippert-Eng 2010, Stark
2016). Organizations are often surprised by the backlash against their actions and may resort
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to hasty backtracking (e.g., Tabuchi 2015). Part of the problem in predicting reactions is that
individuals are not always consistent; rather, their reactions appear to vary with privacy norms and
personal preferences.
Concerns about governments’ and institutions’ use of technology for surveillance have varied
across countries and over time (Anthony et al. 2015, Rule 1973, Westin 2003, Zureik et al. 2010).
In general, monitoring is more accepted when it is perceived as contributing to the collective
good. For example, people may be more willing to accept high levels of monitoring by utility
companies in their homes (e.g., through use of “smart meter” thermostats) if this is meant to
reduce environmental damage and the risk of blackouts for everyone (Horne et al. 2015) rather than
simply increase utility company profits. Similarly, people tend to accept government surveillance
if they believe that it contributes to collective safety and security (Brooks & Manza 2013, Goold
et al. 2013).
Monitoring also produces resentment when it conveys lack of trust (Ball 2010). Particularly
in the workplace, employer monitoring of employees suggests suspicion. The trucking industry,
for example, is increasingly replacing trucker logbooks with automated monitoring. Although the
employer may benefit from increased accuracy, such monitoring produces resentment because
employees feel that employers do not trust them to know how to do their job. As one trucker said,
“If you can’t trust me to go out there and be safe and honest, then take me out of the game and put
somebody in there that you think you can. Either that or put a robot in the truck!” (Levy 2015,
p. 169).
People are more accepting of monitoring that appears to target the “other”—that is, members
of an out-group rather than themselves. Thus, people are more willing to accept CCTVs that they
believe target criminals and monitoring of telephone and Internet activity that they believe targets
terrorists (e.g., Brooks & Manza 2013, Goold 2004). However, when monitoring seems directed
at them, they may be less sanguine. For example, monitoring by the Israeli government produces
resentment and frustration among Palestinians (Shalhoub-Kevorkian 2010); similarly, Muslims
in the United States have reason to be suspicious of government surveillance (Shamas & Arastu
2016). When people feel that they are being targeted, they may resist monitoring. For example,
the use of speed cameras in Quebec led people to use false license plate numbers (Bennett et al.
2014), and teenagers online speak in code to their friends to evade parental monitoring (boyd
2014).
People also dislike monitoring when they have something to hide, particularly when that
something is considered immoral or illegal. In such situations, individuals and groups attempt
to keep secrets (Warren & Laslett 1977). They may also keep secrets when engaged in illegal
or clandestine activities aimed at resisting, weakening, or overthrowing authorities. Because such
clandestine activities are risky, groups must work to ensure that individuals can correctly identify
fellow group members (e.g., Gambetta 2009) and that individuals do not betray the collective by
sharing secrets (Simmel 1906, 1950).
Conversely, the powerful may seek to keep secrets in order to maintain their positions
(Gibson 2014; Lowry 1972; Simmel 1950, p. 365; Zerubavel 2006) and their legitimacy
[Weber 1978 (1921)]. Bureaucracies frequently want to keep secrets from outsiders [Weber 1978
(1921), p. 992], and employers may want to keep information (for example, about company fi-
nancials) from employees (Rosenfeld & Denice 2015). But such efforts by the powerful often fail
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(Gibson 2014, Simmel 1950), partly because keeping a secret requires great control over informa-
tion (Lowry 1972), and such control efforts may divert resources from more productive purposes.
In addition, secret keeping can never be perfect because people have reasons to leak information
to bolster their own power. Thus, secret keepers risk exposure. The implication is that secrecy
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might increase social order in the short run but reduce it in the long run (Gibson 2014).
Interpersonal Relationships
In interpersonal relationships, disclosure (granting another access to oneself ) varies with the actors
involved and the type of relationship (e.g., Balswick & Balkwell 1977, Rubin et al. 1980). In general,
people tend to disclose more in close relationships; in turn, disclosure can maintain or increase
closeness. Revealing personal information builds relationships, in part, because people need to
know something about each other in order to interact successfully and develop close bonds (e.g.,
Blumer 1969, Lawler et al. 2011). Sharing also encourages reciprocal disclosure, because when
one person takes a risk and discloses, the other is more likely to do the same (Cozby 1972).
Thus, “[t]here is both mutual revelation and mutual gratification” (Schwartz 1968, p. 751). Such
mutual disclosures may flatten status hierarchies and increase intimacy (Richardson 1988, Schwartz
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1968).
In addition, disclosure both requires and increases trust. When individuals disclose personal
information, they make themselves vulnerable to the risk that others may react negatively or
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reveal the information to third parties (Eder & Hallinan 1978, Nippert-Eng 2010, Petronio 2002,
Richardson 1988). At the same time, however, by assuming the risk of disclosure, individuals may
also signal commitment and thereby increase their likelihood of being accepted (Kanter 1977).
Disclosure also provides the recipient an opportunity to display trustworthiness by maintaining
confidentiality, thereby increasing the level of trust in a relationship (Petronio 2002).
Concealing information (limiting access to oneself ) is just as essential to managing relationships
as disclosure, particularly for maintaining the absence of a relationship (Shils 1966). Privacy norms
dictate that in public places people should not be accessible to strangers. Accordingly, people often
assume that they will not be monitored or recorded in public (Grimshaw 1982). People also manage
their access to others. In streets, subways, and elevators, people limit the information they accept
by engaging in “civil inattention,” that is, by purposely ignoring available information about others
(Goffman 1966, Hintz & Miller 1995). In a taxi, for example, both the driver and the passenger(s)
may act as if the other were not present in order to create a veil of privacy (Zerubavel 2006).
Likewise, when one person accidentally makes eye contact with another in an elevator, both may
divert their eyes quickly (Hirschauer 2005), and people are uncomfortable if they inadvertently see
into a neighbor’s window (Nippert-Eng 2010). Thus, individuals work to manage privacy in ways
that adhere to privacy norms by limiting access to and by strangers (Campos-Castillo & Hitlin
2013; Goffman 1966).
The desire to conceal also occurs within relationships. Individuals need to withhold information
that might lead the other to see too clearly their differences and imperfections (Bates 1964):
“[T]he more one person involves himself with another on an emotional basis the more both will
need private facilities to conceal nasty habits and self-defaming information from each other”
(Schwartz 1968, p. 744). Stigmatized individuals, in particular, may seek to hide their discrediting
condition to maintain their standing in a relationship (Goffman 1963, Petronio 2002, Stablein
et al. 2015). There are also limits to people’s willingness to accept the disclosures of others:
Too much disclosure may make people uncomfortable (Cozby 1972; see also Argyle & Kendon
1967, Jourard 1964). To avoid learning too much about others, people may engage in “pretense
awareness,” pretending not to know information about the other (Glaser & Strauss 1964). Those
who disclose too much may even be subject to social sanctions (Merten 1999, Miall 1989). Thus,
research suggests that some inaccessibility may be necessary for the existence and longevity of
relationships (Simmel 1906).
Such privacy management efforts are relatively straightforward in societies in which social struc-
tures are concentric and communities are relatively homogeneous (Simmel 1955). Urbanization
complicates matters, however, because it allows both greater individuation and the segmentation
of relationships. In urban settings, individuals can have ties with people from different contexts
who do not know each other. Further, because of the increased anonymity in urban settings, indi-
viduals can share some aspects of themselves in some relationships (e.g., in the family) and other
aspects in other relationships (e.g., at work) (Nock 1993). One challenge associated with these
multiple networks is that each network has its own social expectations that may be inconsistent
with those of another context.
ICTs further complicate matters. Although in some ways people today have greater capacity to
manage their self-presentation through social media, in other ways the barriers between different
domains of their lives are breaking down, and social contexts are collapsing (Hampton 2016).
When there is a collapse across contexts that carry multiple, conflicting expectations, it may
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be impossible for individuals to meet those expectations (Davis 2014, Davis & Jurgenson 2014,
Ellison et al. 2006, Marwick & boyd 2011). Such failures may change people’s perceptions of
each other, thus damaging relationships. Context collapse may be particularly problematic when
it is unintentional (Davis & Jurgenson 2014). Unintentional collapses may occur as a result of a
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Community
Privacy affects not only one-on-one interpersonal relationships, but also groups and communities
more broadly. It has implications for group boundaries, cohesion, and collective action.
Patterns of disclosure strengthen ties among group members and create stronger boundaries
between the group and outsiders. For example, adolescent girls may use secrets as a social currency
to enhance their status within peer groups at the same time as they keep information from their
families, thus strengthening the boundaries separating their friends and their families (Merten
1999; see also boyd 2014). Similarly, individuals may increasingly keep personal thoughts and
feelings from their friends and instead share them with their romantic partners to signify the
couple’s relationship status ( Johnson & Leslie 1982). Thus, privacy management can increase
group cohesion.
In turn, because group cohesion fosters social norms and cooperation (Coleman 1990, Hechter
1987, Horne 2009, Lawler et al. 2011), changes in privacy may have implications for the provision
of collective goods, although this process is not clear. On the one hand, cohesive groups may
be in decline, replaced by social networks in which the individual is the focus of action (Rainie
& Wellman 2012). Without cohesive groups, the potential for collective action may decrease
(Horne 2009, Sampson et al. 1997). On the other hand, networked individuals may be a new
focus of collective action. Online venues may facilitate collective protest by enabling people to
take action anonymously, without putting themselves at risk (Earl 2012). Networked individuals
can also at times call on their networks for action (Davis & Jurgenson 2014). Thus there is some
reason to believe that networks, and the information that flows through them, may be effective for
producing cooperative behavior in some contexts. Given the potentially disparate effects of group
cohesion and networks, the implications of privacy for order are complex.
Privacy changes may also have implications for civic life. The fine-grained data collection and
social sorting that facilitates market discrimination (see below) is also used by political actors.
The result is that people who fall into different classifications are exposed to different kinds of
political information (Danna & Gandy 2001). Whereas too much privacy may damage civic life
(Etzioni 1999), too little privacy and the associated targeted dissemination of information may
have consequences that are not fully understood.
Finally, privacy violations have implications for people’s trust in each other and in essential
social institutions. Frequent media stories describe hacks of individuals’ data that companies and
governments are supposed to keep secure (e.g., Collins 2015, Davis 2015). Of course, people have
always gotten access to private and secret information; but reliance on ICTs for record keeping
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may increase the frequency of such violations because of the large volumes of stored data and the
fact that digital data are never completely secure (Waldo et al. 2007). Continued news of breaches
may reduce confidence in institutions, and in response people may withhold information (Campos-
Castillo & Anthony 2015, Stablein et al. 2015). Revelations of bad behavior may also decrease
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trust, both in institutions and individuals. For example, the 2016 leak of the Panama Papers
revealed secrets about how the wealthy—including government officials and public individuals—
hide their money. Greater transparency about leaders’ bad governance may change the costs and
benefits of taking action against a government, thus making such action more likely (Bennett &
Segerberg 2013, Howard 2015). In general, disclosures about government and other leaders may
have implications for the legitimacy of existing institutions and governance structures.
actors vary in their ability to limit access to themselves and to gain access to others.
In general, visibility (and more broadly, accessibility) is unequally distributed within
hierarchies—from traditional families to bureaucratic institutions like schools and hospitals.
Poorer and lower-status actors are less able than higher-status actors to manage “information
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leakage” (Schwartz 1968), in part because social circumstances make their behaviors more ob-
servable. The size and the structure of lower-class homes, for example, provide less opportunity
to differentiate between front stage (more public) and back stage (more private) spaces (Goffman
1959, p. 123). Children have less privacy than adults (Warren & Laslett 1977), and the sick have
less privacy than the healthy (Fox 1959, Goffman 1961). In addition, lower-status actors may be
subject to bureaucratic institutions that require them to relinquish their privacy to receive services
from others, such as government officials, police, and social workers (Brayne 2014, Levine 2013):
“[I]nsulation from observability, and access to it, are just as important structural elements in a
bureaucracy as the distribution and delimitation of authority” (Coser 1961, p. 29).
People in different positions in a status hierarchy may also use different strategies for managing
privacy. In part, these differences in strategies reflect resource constraints. Lower-status individuals
generally have more difficulty both preventing others’ access and strategically sharing information
with others (Schradie 2012). Lower-status actors who experience stigma may simply withhold
information (e.g., Stablein et al. 2015); in contrast, higher-status individuals have a greater range
of options for managing access to themselves, including how audiences perceive them and interpret
their actions (Martin 2009, Phillips & Kim 2009, Sauder et al. 2012). For example, higher-income
and more educated households are more likely to sign up for “do-not-call” lists (Varian et al.
2005), and high-ranking officials use administrative assistants to screen and decide to whom access
is granted (Zerubavel 1979).
High-status actors also have greater access to lower-status individuals than the reverse: “[T]he
allocation of privacy . . . is a clear measure of one’s status and power in any given situation”
(Nippert-Eng 2010, p. 164; see also Schwartz 1968). Thus, one reason that privacy violations
cause negative and visceral reactions is that they convey a denial of status (Nippert-Eng 2010,
Schwartz 1968). In some contexts, access to others may even be a duty or privilege (e.g., of a pro-
fession) rather than a transgression of privacy norms (Parsons 1939). For example, it is not only
acceptable but also expected that social actors like physicians, lawyers, and psychoanalysts gain
intimate information about their clients. Similarly, welfare case workers have high levels of access
to applicants’ lives and affairs (Piven & Cloward 1971, Levine 2013). Such actors are conferred
higher status in part to enable a level of access to individuals that would otherwise be socially
unacceptable (Schwartz 1968).
Today, organizations, corporations, and governments, rather than individuals, have the greatest
ability to access others and potentially invade privacy (Beniger 1986, Pasquale 2015, Podesta et al.
2014). Decades ago, Shils (1966, p. 305) recognized the potential of these entities: “Privacy has
become a problem because it has become engulfed in the expansion of the powers and ambitions
of elites and in the difficulties that they encounter in attempting to govern and protect and please
vast collectivities.” Institutions now pose an even greater threat because of their increased ability to
gather, stockpile, and analyze information about individuals. Individuals may value the protection
and services provided by, for example, driver’s licenses, credit cards, grocery club cards, social
media accounts and the like: These seem not only benign but necessary to modern life. At the
same time, however, “the inability to keep information private” that is associated with these
amenities reflects a lack of power of citizens and consumers (Kasper 2007, p. 181; see also Westin
1970).
Not only is privacy unequally distributed across social groups and social conditions, but the con-
sequences of the differential ability to gather and use private information may in turn affect
inequality. That is, variation in privacy may weaken, perpetuate, or strengthen existing status and
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price discrimination in the face of transparent pricing information, which economists argue can
be favorable to consumers (e.g., Varian 1985), when pricing information is obfuscated, as in online
targeted advertising, consumers are harmed (see, e.g., Ellison & Ellison 2009, Salop & Stiglitz
1977). Individuals have no way of knowing whether the price they are offered is different from the
prices offered to others, and they may as a result accept offers they would otherwise refuse.
However, detailed information about individuals may also decrease inequality. It may, for exam-
ple, increase the likelihood that no two individuals are members of the same categories, thereby
disrupting the association between broad categories and resources that underlies status hierar-
chies (e.g., the association between gender and leadership) (Lamont & Molnár 2002, Ridgeway
2011). Another possibility is that fine-grained classifications may loosen individuals’ attachments to
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broader categories, in turn facilitating communication and interaction across traditional category
divisions (DiBenigno & Kellogg 2014).
The distribution of privacy may also affect inequality through mechanisms other than social
sorting. There is evidence that individuals who are heavily monitored may refrain from seeking
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services they need (and are legally entitled to) from social welfare institutions and health care
providers, and may even avoid friends and family members. People who have had contact with the
criminal justice system have fewer interactions with other institutions that are required to mon-
itor behavior to execute their functions—for example, hospitals, formal employment, or schools
(Brayne 2014). Similarly, low-income families concerned with being deemed ineligible for ser-
vices avoid transactions at financial institutions (O’Brien 2008), and many immigrants avoid even
health services for fear of revealing information that may get them deported ( Joseph 2011). In
neighborhoods with high incarceration rates, the fear of pervasive monitoring can lead people to
avoid any contact that might expose them to law enforcement: “[Y]oung men’s compromised legal
status transforms the basic institutions of work, friendship, and family into a net of entrapment.
Hospitals become dangerous places to visit, as do jobs. Their mother’s home becomes a last-known
address: the first place the police will look” (Goffman 2014, p. 196). The lack of privacy of poor
individuals leads to further disadvantages for them and damages the social fabric around them.
CONCLUSION
Sociological research highlights the ways in which privacy intersects with social structures and
institutions to affect individuals, groups, and communities. Much of the research on privacy focuses
on what we might call first-order effects: the effects of privacy threats, such as those associated with
new ICTs and the rise of Big Data, on individuals. The work described here emphasizes second-
order effects: the consequences of (changes in) privacy for the organization and functioning of
society. This work shows that privacy has implications for achieving just societies that are able to
meet the collective needs of their citizens. And, just as privacy affects societies as well as individuals,
reactions to privacy threats not only are the result of individual dismay but also reflect the larger
social structures in which threats occur.
Our review of the literature shows that privacy issues arise across multiple social conditions
and contexts. Research highlights how institutional actors such as governments and businesses
manage privacy to achieve their ends—whether collective ends such as safety and security or
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organizational ends such as profit maximization—but also shows that such efforts may not achieve
the desired outcomes, for example, when monitoring creates resistance and backlash. Similarly,
individuals seek to manage their privacy both in their interpersonal relationships and in their
interactions with institutions. Institutional and individual privacy management strategies may
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complement or conflict with each other. Accordingly, the effects of monitoring on social order
are not straightforward; more monitoring may not necessarily lead to more order. Further, the
association between the sharing of personal information and social cohesion is complex, and the
context collapse that is exacerbated by ICTs complicates the management of relationships. Finally,
the relative ability of actors to manage privacy as well as the effects of privacy changes are unevenly
distributed, and these inequalities may have particularly negative consequences for individuals and
communities with low status and few resources.
These tensions are not new. The problem of finding the appropriate balance of disclosure
and monitoring on the one hand, and concealment on the other, did not emerge with new ICTs.
New technologies in some ways highlight (and perhaps exacerbate) existing social dynamics, but
they do not fundamentally alter actors’ concerns. However, these technologies may be reducing
the ability of actors to manage privacy, with unknown effects. Privacy management has become
increasingly complex, in part, because it is mediated by technology in (often) invisible and not
completely controllable ways. Further, because ICTs are rapidly evolving, privacy norms may
be shifting and ambiguous. These complexities and uncertainties, in conjunction with emerging
strategies for addressing them (such as policies that assign responsibility for privacy management
to organizations rather than individuals), may have unintended and unanticipated consequences
for social order and inequality.
Sociology has much to contribute to a scholarly understanding of these macro-level impli-
cations of privacy. Sociologists have produced a range of scholarship relevant for understanding
privacy issues (including research on privacy issues not included in this review, such as privacy at-
titudes, the public and private spheres, and so forth). However, systematic, theoretically informed,
and empirically rigorous research on the sociology of privacy remains underdeveloped. In part,
this is because privacy research has occurred in subdisciplines that rarely speak to each other.
Relevant literature has been produced, for example, in social psychology, criminology, media and
technology studies, political sociology, welfare and poverty studies, and elsewhere. Thus, insights
regarding the implications of privacy for macro-level outcomes are scattered, and the full range of
sociological expertise on inequality and social order has not yet been brought to bear on privacy
issues. Communication among disparate researchers with interests in privacy would contribute to
greater accumulation of knowledge.
Part of the enthusiasm for new ICTs seems to be driven by the faith that timely access to more
information will enable social actors and policy makers to solve a host of problems—ranging from
traffic jams and global warming to public safety and improved health—all while reducing costs and
increasing profits. Smart technology is being incorporated into the electric grid as well as into cars,
home management systems, wearable sensors, and smart phones. Databases are being integrated
across the domains of education, criminal justice, health care, public transportation, and utilities.
Smart cities and the Internet of Things are seen as the wave of the future. However, it is not at
all clear that increased information and the associated losses in privacy will solve pressing social
issues. Further, reductions in privacy may have unanticipated consequences. Without research on
the full range of consequences associated with changes in privacy, it is impossible to evaluate the
trade-offs between privacy and other desired goods, such as safety, health, and so forth. Evaluating
privacy concerns does not just require balancing individual privacy against collective goods (Etzioni
1999, Rule 2007); rather, it involves understanding the individual and collective goods and bads
associated with privacy changes. Sociologists have important and distinct contributions to make
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to such understanding.
SUMMARY POINTS
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1. We define privacy as access of one social actor to another, including what is revealed
or concealed as well as what is sought or ignored. Privacy norms define expectations
about appropriate access within a given context. Privacy management describes an actor’s
strategies and ability to regulate access to the self and others.
2. Privacy is related to social order through social control via the monitoring of actors,
which can produce cooperation but also resistance and backlash.
3. Privacy has implications for cohesion because privacy norms dictate appropriate disclo-
sure for different types of relationships and groups, and because privacy management
shapes and is shaped by the intimacy of relationships.
4. Privacy is a resource that is unequally distributed in society, and the production and
management of privacy may create inequality among social actors.
5. Much work on privacy focuses on first-order effects, that is, the impact of privacy on
individuals. Sociological work is needed to examine the second-order effects, that is, the
consequences of (changes in) privacy for the organization and functioning of society.
FUTURE ISSUES
1. How do the state and other institutions use ICTs to monitor actors, including individuals,
groups (e.g., employees, felons, immigrants), and organizations (e.g., nongovernmental
organizations)? What are the implications of changes in, and increasing levels of, moni-
toring for privacy norms, privacy management, and social order overall?
2. How do individuals and groups (attempt to) manage their privacy in response to changes
in institutional monitoring? What are the implications of changes in monitoring for
individual behavior and collective outcomes?
3. How does the spread and use of ICTs affect trust in social institutions?
4. How do changes in social network structures affect privacy norms and privacy manage-
ment? What role does the spread of ICTs play in changes to privacy norms and privacy
management within social relationships and networks? And what are the implications of
such changes for social capital, group cohesion, and social order?
DISCLOSURE STATEMENT
The authors are not aware of any affiliations, memberships, funding, or financial holdings that
might be perceived as affecting the objectivity of this review.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors contributed equally to this review and are listed alphabetically. The authors thank
Jennifer Earl, Steve Hitlin, James Kitts, and anonymous reviewers for comments on previous
Annu. Rev. Sociol. 2017.43:249-269. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org
drafts.
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Annual Review
of Sociology
Prefatory Article
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A Life in Sociology
Robert M. Hauser p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 1
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SO43-FrontMatter ARI 5 July 2017 14:1
Formal Organizations
The Social Bases of Philanthropy
Emily Barman p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 271
Political and Economic Sociology
The Demand Side of Hiring: Employers in the Labor Market
David B. Bills, Valentina Di Stasio, and Klarita Gërxhani p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 291
Differentiation and Stratification
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vi Contents
SO43-FrontMatter ARI 5 July 2017 14:1
Policy
The Social Safety Net After Welfare Reform: Recent Developments
and Consequences for Household Dynamics
Laura Tach and Kathryn Edin p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 541
Indexes
Errata
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