Description
Book SynopsisPrivacy, in human history, is a relatively recent concept. Nobody had much privacy in the Middle Ages. Even kings and queens lacked privacy: it was an age when crowds watched a queen give birth, and the king received visitors while on the chamber pot. Technology and concepts of privacy grew up together—as both friends and enemies. For example, the late 19th century invention of the candid camera made it possible, for the first time, to take someone’s picture without that person’s consent. This fact was in the background of the classic article by Warren and Brandeis that launched the right of privacy. Today, we have smart phones with cameras, selfies, the Internet, surveillance cameras, and tools that can look through walls, smell through walls, see through walls. Dangers to privacy have multiplied enormously, and we have only just begin figuring how to handle the change.
This book is timely as our basic understandings of privacy are challenged by modern technology, changing social mores, and evolving legal understandings that both reflect and reinforce underlying changes in society. It is likely to be of interest to graduate and undergraduate students, scholars, and potentially other professionals with an interest in law and social norms.
Trade ReviewThis is a wonderfully ambitious and remarkably comprehensive book that examines multiple aspects of privacy. By tracing the meaning of privacy in contexts ranging from public nudity to airport security to revenge porn, and offering a comparative perspective, the book compellingly shows that privacy is a social and cultural concept. The authors have written an admirable overview of historical and contemporary interpretations of privacy with a provocative thesis.
-- Naomi R. Cahn, University of Virginia School of Law
The Walled Garden provides a fascinating exploration of how the law shapes and is shaped by evolving cultural understandings of privacy. As Lawrence M. Friedman and Joanna L. Grossman make clear in this engaging book, America’s willingness to protect privacy, or tolerate invasions, has fluctuated over time and across contexts. You will never think about keeping a secret, posing for a photograph, or walking down the street the same way again.
-- Jill Elaine Hasday, University of Minnesota Law School, author of Intimate Lies and the Law
Table of ContentsIntroduction
Part I: Mandatory Privacy
Chapter 1: The Tiger’s Cage
Chapter 2: Aesthetics and the Body
Chapter 3: Speak No Evil, See No Evil: Forbidden Words and Speech
Chapter 4: The Privilege of Silence
Part II: Elective Privacy
Chapter 5: I Want to Be Alone: Privacy and Choice
Chapter 6: They Led Two Lives
Chapter 7: In the Closet
Chapter 8: The Eyes that Never Sleep: Surveillance and Society
Part III: The Flight from Privacy
Chapter 9: Public and Private: Celebrities and the Rest of Us
Chapter 10: Privacy in the Modern Age
