An interdisciplinary group of privacy scholars explores social meaning and value of privacy in new privacy-sensitive areas.

This collection of essays makes readily accessible many of the most significant and influential discussions of privacy.

The Handbook of Privacy Studies is the first book in the world that brings together several disciplinary perspectives on privacy, such as the legal, ethical, medical, informatics and anthropological perspective. Privacy is in the news almost every day: mass surveillance by intelligence agencies, the use of social media data for commercial profit and political microtargeting, password hacks and identity theft, new data protection regimes, questionable reuse of medical data, and concerns about how algorithms shape the way we think and decide. This book offers interdisciplinary background information about these developments and how to understand and properly evaluate them. The book is set up for use in interdisciplinary educational programmes. Each chapter provides a structured analysis of the role of privacy within that discipline, its characteristics, themes and debates, as well as current challenges. Disciplinary approaches are presented in such a way that students and researchers from every scientific background can follow the argumentation and enrich their own understanding of privacy issues.

Drawing on a wide range of literature in moral and political philosophy, law, cognitive and social psychology, and anthropology (not to mention some very perceptive readings of novels by Henry James), Professor Schoeman shows how the aim of moral philosophy ought to be to understand our social character, not to establish fortifications against it in the name of rationality and autonomy.

Privacy is one of the most urgent issues associated with information technology and digital media. This book claims that what people really care about when they complain and protest that privacy has been violated is not the act of sharing information itself—most people understand that this is crucial to social life —but the inappropriate, improper sharing of information. Arguing that privacy concerns should not be limited solely to concern about control over personal information, Helen Nissenbaum counters that information ought to be distributed and protected according to norms governing distinct social contexts—whether it be workplace, health care, schools, or among family and friends. She warns that basic distinctions between public and private, informing many current privacy policies, in fact obscure more than they clarify. In truth, contemporary information systems should alarm us only when they function without regard for social norms and values, and thereby weaken the fabric of social life.

This new book by Beate Rössler is a work of real quality and originality on an extremely topical issue: the issue of privacy and the relations between the private and the public. Rössler investigates the reasons why we value privacy and why we ought to value it. In the context of modern, liberal societies, Rössler develops a theory of the private which links privacy and autonomy in a constitutive way: privacy is a necessary condition to lead an autonomous life. The book develops a theory of freedom and autonomy which sees the ability to pose the “practical question” of how one wants to live, of what a person strives to be, at the centre of the modern idea of autonomy. The question of privacy is emerging as an increasingly important topic in social and political theory and is central to many current debates in law, the media and politics. The Value of Privacy will be widely recognised to be a classic contribution to the subject.