Relational privacy requires collective maintenance and second-order control over values

Evidence

A better alternative, proposed by various legal scholars, is to move beyond traditional liberal framing of privacy toward a relational understanding of privacy. This relational approach sees privacy as a feature of the mutuality of social relations, a condition that must be collectively sustained if selves and others are to flourish at all. This approach flows directly from the socially grounded approach to the minimal integrity of the self that we found in Hegel and Dussel. This approach also emphasizes not just control over one’s process of making choices but also second-order control: the ability to manage to some degree one’s choices about choices, that is, one’s values. This is precisely the level of freedom that is damaged, as Hegel predicted, when a social order starts to be organized around practical principles that no longer fit with the values its members thought were theirs. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 561

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines relational privacy as mutuality of social relations plus second-order control over one’s values.
• XREF: connects to: Revealing more online can paradoxically conceal what one keeps private — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 624; Purely relational privacy leaves no entity whose autonomy is protected — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 562; Privacy is fundamentally about decision rights over self-disclosure — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 283

Broader Connections

• Privacy is fundamentally about decision rights over self-disclosure #complicates (0.78) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 283