Privacy Talk with Mette Birkedal Bruun, Professor of Church History at the University of Copenhagen: What is the relationship with human-being and privacy?
“This interview recorded on 28th June 2022 is talking about privacy
and history”
Kohei is having great time discussing privacy and history with Mette Birkedal Bruun.
This interview outline:
- What can we learn about privacy from our history?
- What is the relationship with human-being and privacy?
- What does it expect with collaborative research?
- What can we learn about privacy from our history?
Mette: I think what … I think the most important lesson that we have right now to convey from our historical research, is really that privacy is much more malleable and ephemeral than we think.
So often when we talk with scholars who work on the early modern period, that’s a period from approximately 1500 to 1800 in the West, and often scholars who know this period very well say, ‘there is no such thing as early modern privacy’, because we know that in that period people lived closely together and you know the bedroom was not private and people would sleep many people in the same bed and so on.
But what we see in our research is that there are still little pockets of privacy created. So people might not have privacy in their bedroom, but then they would move out of their house to get privacy or they wouldsomehow seclude themselves either with real walls, physical and material walls, or by other forms of boundary drawing.
And when we’re looking at this, we’re looking very much at historical individual cases. So we’re looking at particular instances in which individuals created privacy for themselves.
Or it could also be expectations of privacy, so, you know, somebody would complain that the neighbor is making noise and disturbing them.
So that’s some form of indication of, ‘well, I was expecting to have some form of privacy. I was expecting not to have noise now. I’m having noise that is very disturbing for me’. So we are developing that kind of unearthing, you may say, revealing that kind of cases.
- What is the relationship with human-being and privacy?
These are just individual cases, but they are extremely important because they help remind us to put the human beings back into the whole issue of privacy. So, so you know, where are the human beings who are expecting privacy?
Where are the human beings that are administering the technologies? — also in a historical sense technologies which are not technologies in our sense, but other forms of technologies, the technologies that can disturb privacy or maintain privacy?
So I think history is really a good way of reminding us that there are human beings in all of these different constellations, and I think perhaps sometimes for contemporary privacy issues, it’s important to be reminded to think about where are the human beings, both the human beings who are administering the technologies and who are the subjects of the technologies and the advances of technology, so I think, history may actually have a mission there.
Kohei: Thank you. So I’m personally very curious. I think like the Europeans, and US have a different concept of privacy rights. We are not on a continent, but I think in Europe is going to develop in the original style and US is more kind of like the kind of a property so it’s a kind of asset style.
So do you think there any historical differences in the developments in European and US style of privacy?
- What does it expect with collaborative research?
Mette: That’s really interesting. That’s a very interesting question. And I’m only just beginning to understand this because the center, up until now, has been pretty Eurocentric because we wanted to understand the European basis, but now we are developing our programs.
So we have research collaborations with scholars who work on Latin America, and we have projects within the center that work on India. So we are broadening our geographical scope and that also means that we’re beginning to learn what happens with privacy when it moves out of Europe and when the European notion of privacy is invested into cultural encounters with other contexts.
And I think the whole question of the US — and I’m not an expert there, I’m only beginning to learn about this — so what happened when the European settlers come to what is now the US in terms of their already established notions of privacy?
How are they transposed into the US context? And what is the historical development from there?
So I am, let’s talk again in two years, I cannot give you an answer right now, but I think it’s a very, very important question, because and also again, to remind us, that privacy’s a Western concept, but the question is whether the broad cultural concept of privacy which is not only about data protection, whether that’s actually a European concept and and that’s another reason why we really have to understand the roots, I think.
Kohei: Thank you. Yeah, because I visited the other countries that I felt, Oh, it’s a different context in each countries, right. From the Japanese perspective, how Asian contexts will be allies as well. So we should be to know each other to create a more broad context that has to come together.
So that’s fine. I’m wondering that the word is any kind of definitions, comparisons that we can see through the history so that.
Mette: I think that’s super interesting. And that’s one of the reasons — there are many reasons — why I’m so glad to have architects on board in the center. Because they remind us of the whole spatial context, which is, of course, very secondary in contemporary discussions of data protection.
But on the other hand, all cultures, I suggest, have some sense of well, you have space with some maybe more private or more intimate or more secluded. So I think the whole architectural notion that’s actually one where we may begin to look across cultures in a very interesting way.
Kohei: Thank you.
So I’d like to move on to the next question with you then. You have been published privacy study journal, they are also listed, and the very exclusive editorial board with different contexts.
As we talked at first about the multidisciplinary approach. I’m assuming you were working on that. So why did you start this project and could you tell us about this journal and details?
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