Human Privacy in Virtual and Physical Worlds

This open-access book is premised on the belief that understanding and protecting privacy requires a multidisciplinary approach. The editors of this contributed book believe that privacy is a ‘wicked problem’ because of its social complexity. In the modern world, political, social, and technological structures increasingly violate human privacy in physical and virtual spaces. Our behaviors are surveilled, captured, and monetized—often without our knowledge. Contributors are experts from diverse fields, including anthropology, architecture, data science, engineering, history, information systems, library sciences, medicine, philosophy, and supply chain management, each writing for an explicitly interdisciplinary readership. 

Privacy as a concept is a moving target across the globe, morphing and transforming historically from one epoch to the next. By moving beyond the limitations of a single disciplinary lens, this book aims at a richer, more comprehensive, and more lasting analysis. This collection is of great interest to students and scholars of diverse backgrounds studying human privacy.

Mary C. Lacity is David D. Glass Chair and Distinguished Professor of Information Systems in the Sam M. Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas. She was previously Curators’ Distinguished Professor at the University of Missouri. She has held visiting positions at MIT, the London School of Economics, Washington University, and Oxford University. She is Founding Co-editor of the Palgrave Series on Technology, Work, and Globalization. She has published 32 books on the topics related to technology, work, and globalization, including authoring and co-editing nine books in the series.

Lynda Coon is Professor of History and Dean of the Honors College at the University of Arkansas. In 2023, she organized a cross-disciplinary course called Privacy, recruiting professors from architecture, political science, engineering, medicine, business, philosophy, data science, and library sciences to teach the course. Coon’s research focuses on the history of Christianity from circa 300-900. Her first book, Sacred Fictions: Holy Women and Hagiography in Late Antiquity, explored the sacred biographies of holy women in late antiquity. Her second book, Dark Age Bodies: Gender and Monastic Practice in the Early Medieval West, focused on the ritual, spatial, and gendered worlds of monks in the Carolingian period (ca. 750-987).