Hobbes, Locke, and most explicitly Mill ( 1910 ) and Rorty ( 1989 ), ‘‘privacy’’
hasalsomeant something akin to ‘‘freedom from interference by the state or
society in general’’ (Roessler 2005 ,43V). Within this tradition, privacy is
closely and genuinely bound up with the concept of freedom, and it is on
this meaning of privacy that most of today’s normative conceptions are
based.
It is worth noting at this point that theories of privacy—of the changes it
has undergone, the threat it faces, the function it fulWlls—are to be found in
widely diVering and often wholly separate discourses, each approaching the
problem from a diVerent angle, referring to diVerent histories of privacy, and
focusing on diVerent aspects of the term. For example, sociological theories
of the public sphere, as well as sociological studies of the transformation of
the family, employ a concept of privacy that cannot be reduced to the natural
sphere of the household, but that nonetheless remains general and—standing
in simple opposition to the concept of the public sphere—is not further
speciWed (Habermas 1992 ; Sennett 2002 ; Fraser 1992 ). The same goes for
theories of civilization and modernization that operate with a concept of
privacy, yet fail to specify this in any greater detail. For the most part,
therefore, privacy simply remains a matter of ‘‘the private family’’ after all.
By contrast, the discourses of legal studies, philosophy, and feminism have
focused more closely on the concept, deWnition, and meaning of privacy
itself. The diverse branches oflegal studies,reXecting the very broad spectrum
of case law (Turkington and Allen 1999 ; Lacey 2004 ), have witnessed an
extremely heterogeneous debate on the distinct interpretations of aright to
privacy, a debate that has been triggered in particular by famous legal cases. In
philosophy, speciWc discussions of the concept and deWnition of privacy date
mainly from the 1960 s. This has connected with and responded to social and
legal developments, and has generated theories about the value of privacy and
the connection between intimate relationships and what, if anything, it
means to have a right to privacy (Thomson 1975 ; Chapman and Pennock
1971 ; Schoeman 1984 ).
Feminist theories have exerted a particularly important inXuence on these
discourses, in sociology, philosophy, and legal studies alike. From the outset,
feminist approaches have levelled their criticism at the natural concept of
privacy and the accompanying gender-speciWc division of labor, thus also at
those varieties of liberal theory that were grounded on a male social contract
that excludes women (Pateman 1989 ). Strictly speaking, one cannot here
speak of feminist theory in the singular form: not only are a great variety of
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