英语世界隐私概念综述

Briefing Paper: Concepts of Privacy in English

在英语世界中,有诸多文献探讨隐私问题。这里只涉及话语、概念层面上对隐私涵义的探讨,而广义的、具体的、日常行为层面上的隐私定义则不在讨论之列。如果仅从具体日常行为角度研究隐私,我们很难知道隐私是如何被概念化的过程。所以,在特定文本中,应该像重视具体行为一样,来考察思想著作中隐私的功能、结构和价值。在概念层面上,研讨隐私并不要求有准确、唯一的定义。尽管从浩如烟海的文献中对隐私概念的考察难免挂一漏万,但它无疑勾画了当代西方世界对隐私理解和研究的大致轮廓。

There are great deal of documents on exploration about privacy in English world. Here we don't concern with instances of behaviour that fall within broad definitions of privacy; instead, the purpose is to explore concepts of privacy in discourse. Although in popular discourse, and especially in cross - cultural comparisons, privacy is most often seen in terms of instances of conduct, these specific instances, mostly taken out of context, tell us little about how privacy is conceptualised. A more promising approach is by examining the functions, mechanisms and values as well as the content (instances) of privacy in a given context. In conceptual level, it does not offer a definition of privacy, since there is none that is commonly accepted in the literature on the subject. Although the wide range of ideas on privacy described above is by no means exhaustive, it gives some sense of the broad picture in contemporary Western concepts of privacy.