The solitary witness : An essay on privacy, public order and the organization of experience

This study is an interpretive and descriptive investigation in the sociology of everyday life. Specifically, a frame analysis is developed toward an understanding of how privacy is produced, maintained, and transformed in public spaces. Four planes of order-- mythology, affinity, suspension and vulnerability--derive from precedents in current literature. The production, maintenance and transformation of privacy through these planes is demonstrated by observations in a laundromat, bus terminal and lounges, and interpreted by works of Erving Goffman and related studies of space, distance, and privacy. Privacy is distinguished as: (1) a duality, in content, between "continuous identity"--biography--and "suspension in place"; (2) entry into a realm of objects and thus vulnerable to objectification; (3) a realm of play which expands and contracts by gender and biographical investments; and (4) a structure vulnerable along gender and attributed status dimensions. Privacy is also characterized by the subordination of aloneness in contemporary society. This inequality is explained through reference to popular culture and literature. Gender and status differentials allot the most license for individualism where the least departure is feasible: to males and to those of higher status. Individualism and solitude are controlled by morally tinged images limiting their own range and by massification of expression.