The known citizen : a history of privacy in modern America / Sarah E. Igo.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Igo, Sarah E., 1969- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Privacy--United States--History--20th century.

Privacy.

Privacy--United States--History--21st century.

Self-presentation--United States--History--20th century.

Self-presentation.

Self-presentation--United States--History--21st century.

Privacy, Right of--United States--History--20th century.

Privacy, Right of.

Privacy, Right of--United States--History--21st century.

Information society--United States--History--21st century.

Information society.

History.

United States.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

569 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, 2018.

Summary:

Every day, Americans make decisions about their privacy: what to share and when, how much to expose and to whom. Securing the boundary between one's private affairs and public identity has become a central task of citizenship. How did privacy come to loom so large in American life? Sarah Igo tracks this elusive social value across the twentieth century, as individuals questioned how they would, and should, be known by their own society. Privacy was not always a matter of public import. But beginning in the late nineteenth century, as corporate industry, social institutions, and the federal government swelled, increasing numbers of citizens believed their privacy to be endangered. Popular journalism and communication technologies, welfare bureaucracies and police tactics, market research and workplace testing, scientific inquiry and computer data banks, tell-all memoirs and social media all propelled privacy to the foreground of U.S. culture. Jurists and philosophers but also ordinary people weighed the perils, the possibilities, and the promise of being known. In the process, they redrew the borders of contemporary selfhood and citizenship. The Known Citizen reveals how privacy became the indispensable language for monitoring the ever-shifting line between our personal and social selves. Igo's sweeping history, from the era of "instantaneous photography" to the age of big data, uncovers the surprising ways that debates over what should be kept out of the public eye have shaped U.S. politics and society. It offers the first wide-angle view of privacy as it has been lived and imagined by modern Americans.-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Technologies of publicity

Documents of identity

The porous psyche

A right to be let alone

Codes of confidentiality and consent

The record prison

The ethic of transparency

Stories of one's self.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780674737501

0674737504

OCLC:

1002821824