Instructor: Professor Jolynn Dellinger
SCISOC 615s.01: Privacy: Concepts and Culture Informing Law and Policy
The class will be once a week on Mondays at Gross from 11:00 – 1:30 – Undergrads are welcome!!
Course Description: Our ideas about the concept of privacy and what it means together with cultural commitments to diverse values have informed the development of privacy law and policy and the consequent protection (or lack thereof) of privacy as a “right.” In this seminar, we will explore the constituent concepts that make up our understanding of privacy here in the United States with class sessions dedicated to consent, choice, control, and context; trust; anonymity and obscurity; personality and identity; attention and addiction; freedom from surveillance; and dignity and self-determination, among others. We will consider how conceptual understandings of privacy play out in different cultural contexts beginning with privacy in the United States and the ways it has been shaped by our cultural commitments to individual rights, liberty, freedom of speech, and the market. To further understand the relevance of cultural considerations, we will spend class sessions looking at privacy in the EU, China, and India. Throughout, we will consider the ways cultures change over time, the relevance of demographics and power asymmetries, and our societal ideas about who deserves privacy. We will discuss the power of norms and the ways emerging technologies, the law (or lack thereof), and policy affect changing norms when it comes to privacy.
