ABSTRACT
Each of us has an idea of what we mean by our privacy, and from time to time we may complain that we do not have enough, or else that we have too much of it, or that someone has intolerably invaded our privacy. Yet, when we try to say what we mean by privacy, or when we try to define what is private to someone else, we discover that the concept is difficult to define. Our ideas of privacy and our accustomed ways of protecting our privacy are deeply embedded in our rules of etiquette, in the architecture of our buildings and automobiles and landscape, in our verbal and nonverbal means of communicating, in our role relationships and the degree of power we have in them, and in our knowledge that constitutional law guarantees us certain forms of privacy. We need only move to another culture, or to another subculture within our own society, to have it forcibly brought home to us that privacy is relative to many other factors, and that the loss of accustomed forms of privacy is a form of culture shock that reduces our satisfaction and effectiveness in life.
