Visibility, Respectability, and Privacy: Black and White in 17th Century Amsterdam
This post first appeared on the blog for the Centre for Privacy Studies: https://privacy.hypotheses.org/1229 Privacy involves the ability of regulating access to oneself: this is the working definition that I have been using in my historical research when I focus on bodily integrity, especially when my interest is a question of sexual, reproductive, or bodily privacy more in general. I am inspired by Margulis (1977 and 2003), whose contributions focus on sociological research questions, as well as on other authors' contingent definitions of privacy for purposes of research in other disciplines (for example: Hughes, 2012). For me, this working definition has been useful for historical studies because I need to attend to the fact that the concept of privacy, as we know today with its resonance as a human right, did not exist yet in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, the periods I focus on. Which does not at all mean that people then didn't need privacy! While it is rare for me