Relational privacy and the networked governance of the self

Relational privacy: Where the East and the West could meet

“…To summarize, understanding autonomy from a relational perspective as it recognizes that the person is “enabled by past and present networks of which we are a part: the people and material things with which we are connected give us the capacity to be autonomous” (Bannerman, , p. 4). It is this relational perspective of the person that can not only serve as a valuable alternative to individual autonomy , but also as a connection between the Western feminist philosophy and Eastern Confucianism role ethics.…”

“…It is only when we recognize that meaningful privacy is embedded within its environment, that can we start to ask what might be within the current context that enables or disables privacy and other values we would like to protect. To learn from relational autonomy , “given that some network configurations foster autonomy, while others do not, what is important is individuals' ability to control, and play a role in constituting, networks of relations in such a way that makes the interdependence of the individual with the other elements of the network conducive to autonomy in a substantive sense” (Bannerman, , p. 6). Second, a relational perspective can reconcile and provide a common ground between Western and Eastern traditions, which is important for researching privacy in today's cross‐cultural environment.…”

“…There are some incongruences between the understanding of privacy via the relational perspectives of Confucianism and feminist philosophy. Feminist theorists somehow still use control as a metaphor despite that they recognize the networked nature of privacy, “it is the ability to control our networked selves to achieve autonomy” (Bannerman, , p. 6); in a sense, one is either going to be controlled, or to control the networked environment. Such conceptual antagonism/dichotomy between the person and his/her environment is not observed in the Confucian conception of the person.…”

“…A second potential diverging point is that it is unclear what the relational consideration of Confucian person and relational autonomy under Confucian philosophy might say about the relation between human and technology. Relational privacy under feminist theory already explicitly recognize the networked nature of the self, which includes the fact that especially nowadays the self is constructed partially by networked information technologies, in addition to the relations with other people (Bannerman, , p. 2). For Confucianism, on the other hand, it remains less clear how the relation with information technology might be conceptualized.…”

“…Meanwhile, current working conceptualizations of privacy rooted in the Western concept of individual autonomy as having control over personal information is increasingly falling short in helping answer many privacy questions people face in actual life. Privacy researchers have moved on and proposed relational privacy (Bannerman, ; Stoljar, ) as a more promising alternative to the understanding of privacy. This paper aims to begin exploring these two aspects of privacy research, i.e., how privacy is understood in Eastern culture, and how an Eastern understanding of privacy might relate to the latest conception of privacy in the Western academia.…”