There is a clear need to better understand the interdependent relationships between people and the biophysical world. Social science research is essential for such efforts but is not yet widely viewed as relevant to ecological research. Impeding its advancement in this direction are the characteristics of a modern Western worldview exhibited by, and problematic for, much of social scientific research, especially emphases on mechanism, dualism, and prediction. I offer environmental behavior research as an area in which these are apparent. I discuss the need to better account for the relations and processes that characterize human social life and suggest an alternative approach for doing so. Drawing on complementary works in sociological theory, I develop the notion of ecological habitus and propose it as a practical tool for more adequately thinking about and studying socioecological phenomena. I conclude with brief speculation about the possible empirical uses of the ecological habitus concept.
This paper explores changes in the meaning of privacy. Because individuals' understandings and experiences of privacy vary by sociohistorical contexts, privacy is difficult to define and even more challenging to measure. Avoiding common obstacles to privacy research, I examine privacy from the standpoint of its invasion. I develop a typology of privacy invasions and use it to analyze discussions of invasions of privacy in U.S. newspapers. I show that the nature of invasions discussed in the news is increasingly covert and continuous and find empirical support for the often-made claim that the concept of privacy is evolving in meaningful ways.
A recent issue of Contemporary Sociology devoted its "Symposium" to surveillance studies. In this issue, five authors review the importance of works on surveillance and assess their position within the discipline. Marx (2007) notes the recent explosion of scholarly interest in surveillance, but focuses on its incoherence and the need to more clearly situate it within a broader sociological context. The sociology of privacy, as I see it, would provide a fitting home for surveillance research. Surveillance, a form of observation, is sociologically relevant insofar as it violates or transforms social norms regarding appropriate observation and leads to consequences for individuals and groups in terms of inequality and power. Observation is but one component of privacy and the experience of its invasion,
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