Strangers and Intimates
Rise and Fall of Private Life, The
-
- $17.99
-
- $17.99
Publisher Description
What does it mean to have a private life?
From ancient times to our digital present, Strangers and Intimates traces the dramatic emergence of private life, uncovering how it became a protected domain, cherished as a space for intimacy, self-discovery and freedom. In this sweeping history, Tiffany Jenkins, an acclaimed cultural historian, takes readers on an epic journey, from the strict separations of public and private in ancient Athens to the moral rigidity of the Victorian home, and from the feminists of the 1970s who declared that ‘the personal is political’ to the boundary-blurring demands of our digital age.
Strangers and Intimates is both a celebration of the private realm and a warning: as social media, surveillance and the expectations of constant openness reshape our lives, are we in danger of losing a part of ourselves? Jenkins reveals how privacy shaped the modern world and why it remains crucial for our personal and collective freedom – and why this freedom is now in mortal danger.
Today, as we share more than ever before and digital surveillance watches our every move, Jenkins asks a timely question: can private life survive the demands of the twenty-first century?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Sociologist Jenkins (Keeping Their Marbles) delivers a substantial but still nimble exploration of the modern notion of "private life." Jenkins traces the present-day understanding of private vs. public back to the 1500s, when Martin Luther split from the Catholic church and Thomas More was beheaded for defying Henry V on religious matters. Both men, she argues, inadvertently but "fundamentally... authorized the individual to follow their private convictions" rather than obey authority. From there, Jenkins traces a "complex interdependency" between public and private life over time, demonstrating how private life has been seen as everything from a "realm of deprivation" to a "place of danger" to a "refuge"; she attributes the greater value placed on privacy over the course of the modern era to developments such as the spread of literacy, sexual revolutions, feminism, polls, and even items as seemingly minor as mail slots in front doors. Some past views on privacy will shock modern readers—in the 17th century, for example, reporting on the immoral behavior of one's neighbor was encouraged, even when it meant spying on sex through a peephole in the wall—but Jenkins chillingly concludes that today, as governments and corporations walk back privacies (particularly via data mining and court-ordered cracking of encrypted social media messages), society is closer to the 17th century than readers might want to believe. It adds up to an eye-opening study of the value of keeping some things unseen.
