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The Known Citizen: A History of Privacy in Modern America
Every day, Americans make decisions about their privacy: what to share and when, how much to expose and to whom. Securing the boundary between one's private affairs and public identity has become a central task of citizenship. How did privacy come to loom so large in American life? Sarah Igo tracks this elusive social value across the twentieth century, as individuals questioned how they would, and should, be known by their own society.
Privacy was not always a matter of public import. But beginning in the late nineteenth century, as corporate industry, social institutions, and the federal government swelled, increasing numbers of citizens believed their privacy to be endangered. Popular journalism and communication technologies, welfare bureaucracies and police tactics, market research and workplace testing, scientific inquiry and computer data banks, tell-all memoirs and social media all propelled privacy to the foreground of U.S. culture. Jurists and philosophers but also ordinary people weighed the perils, the possibilities, and the promise of being known. In the process, they redrew the borders of contemporary selfhood and citizenship.
The Known Citizen reveals how privacy became the indispensable language for monitoring the ever-shifting line between our personal and social selves. Igo's sweeping history, from the era of "instantaneous photography" to the age of big data, uncovers the surprising ways that debates over what should be kept out of the public eye have shaped U.S. politics and society. It offers the first wide-angle view of privacy as it has been lived and imagined by modern Americans.
Privacy was not always a matter of public import. But beginning in the late nineteenth century, as corporate industry, social institutions, and the federal government swelled, increasing numbers of citizens believed their privacy to be endangered. Popular journalism and communication technologies, welfare bureaucracies and police tactics, market research and workplace testing, scientific inquiry and computer data banks, tell-all memoirs and social media all propelled privacy to the foreground of U.S. culture. Jurists and philosophers but also ordinary people weighed the perils, the possibilities, and the promise of being known. In the process, they redrew the borders of contemporary selfhood and citizenship.
The Known Citizen reveals how privacy became the indispensable language for monitoring the ever-shifting line between our personal and social selves. Igo's sweeping history, from the era of "instantaneous photography" to the age of big data, uncovers the surprising ways that debates over what should be kept out of the public eye have shaped U.S. politics and society. It offers the first wide-angle view of privacy as it has been lived and imagined by modern Americans.
592 pages, Hardcover
First published May 7, 2018
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
June 24, 2019
This took me a loooooong time to finish. Not because it wasn't interesting, because the topic of privacy and its historical relevance is fascinating, and the book is fairly long, and each sentence is layered with meaning. I found the threads that intertwined the book and the common themes spread from the 1890s to today to be very well thought out, and her chosen focuses to be continually relevant into the present. For such a broad topic, Igo's focus on the interest of those wanting to be seen/unseen/who is chosen to stay unseen is continually enduring into the present. And while our understanding of privacy v.s. anonymity may have changed somewhat in the present, as well as the evolution of what privacy constitutes, it is important to have a frame of reference into what people in the past though privacy was.
I found her chapters on wiretapping, medical privacy, ethics in sociology (particularly on "Tearoom Trade"), and memoir ethics in the 90s to be particularly engaging. While the middle was kind of a slog to get through, these last chapters really tied the book together and were quite interesting. I liked her linear approach to privacy as well. However, I found her thesis to be slightly muddled, and couldn't help but wonder as to what was being intentionally discarded her brief forays into serious topics such as sexism and race. Additionally, I felt that these topics should have been integrated more as opposed to merely left as brief adages. While those topics in terms of privacy could be full books by themselves, the discussion of sexism in terms of medical privacy could have been more fleshed out, as could race when talking about Social Security and welfare. I also felt that the author's opinions interjected slightly when touching upon these topics, but did not substantially contribute to the thesis.
Overall a very interesting book that taught me a lot about the evolution of how we understand privacy. The chapter topics are very well thought out and approached in a linear manner that takes concentration to digest, but is ultimately not difficult to understand. While "The Known Citizen" could take harder/deeper stances on intersectional issues of gender and race, it is still a very multi-faceted book that I quite liked from an academic standpoint. A legit book is one that is well sourced with many quotes and interpretations of the evidence, and "The Known Citizen" is impressively researched and well thought out. 4 out of 5!
I found her chapters on wiretapping, medical privacy, ethics in sociology (particularly on "Tearoom Trade"), and memoir ethics in the 90s to be particularly engaging. While the middle was kind of a slog to get through, these last chapters really tied the book together and were quite interesting. I liked her linear approach to privacy as well. However, I found her thesis to be slightly muddled, and couldn't help but wonder as to what was being intentionally discarded her brief forays into serious topics such as sexism and race. Additionally, I felt that these topics should have been integrated more as opposed to merely left as brief adages. While those topics in terms of privacy could be full books by themselves, the discussion of sexism in terms of medical privacy could have been more fleshed out, as could race when talking about Social Security and welfare. I also felt that the author's opinions interjected slightly when touching upon these topics, but did not substantially contribute to the thesis.
Overall a very interesting book that taught me a lot about the evolution of how we understand privacy. The chapter topics are very well thought out and approached in a linear manner that takes concentration to digest, but is ultimately not difficult to understand. While "The Known Citizen" could take harder/deeper stances on intersectional issues of gender and race, it is still a very multi-faceted book that I quite liked from an academic standpoint. A legit book is one that is well sourced with many quotes and interpretations of the evidence, and "The Known Citizen" is impressively researched and well thought out. 4 out of 5!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 18, 2020
It was a decent review of some various privacy-related topics throughout the 20th century. However, the term 'privacy' was never really well-defined. As well, shifting thoughts on privacy were more anecdotal than linear. For example, starting with social security numbers, the book chronologically moves forward to another topic, as if the privacy issue just vanished. Finally, significant Supreme Court decisions seemed arbitrarily referenced throughout, such as Griswold. It was like the reference was included to appear that the topic being discussed somehow directly related to it.
July 19, 2018
Will be hosting a podcast with the author over at New Books in American Studies soon.
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November 7, 2021The first book in our tech + cultural studies reading group (aka people who work in/around tech reading history, philosophy, cultural criticism etc on tech/tech adjacent stuff). The book is a honker but fascinating and really readable for how dense it is. A good corrective to both the tech world’s goldfish-y ahistoricism as well as overly simplistic solutions about how we “solve” the problem of privacy. Great discussion fodder, too.
September 15, 2019
I had been thinking of this as "fun" reading but it also brought together so many histories relevant to my work as an archivist, researcher, and tech worker. (Also, person in the world and recent reader of memoir-ish essay collections.) The conclusion is packed, only emphasizing the rapidity of privacy developments in just the last 15 years.
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December 30, 2020That privacy is a mercurial topic is not a groundbreaking assertion in the age of big data, but how exactly has privacy changed? In her new book, The Known Citizen, Sarah E. Igo traces the shifting meanings of privacy in America from the late nineteenth century onwards. From the outrage over postcards in the 1890s to proud publication of social security numbers in the 1940s to the political scandals of the Nixon and Clinton presidencies, Igo clearly demonstrates how our conception of what is or should be private has been in near-constant flux over the past century. Former taboos are now commonplace on TV shows, in memoirs, and on the internet. I wish Igo had gone deeper into the gendered nature of privacy and had pushed further into our present, but this remains a necessary book for anyone who is scrolling through their Instagram and wondering how we got here.
July 17, 2020
I read this book for a summer reading assignment. It certainly provided a detailed history of privacy in modern America, from the late 19th century to the present times. However, to me it was a bit boring. Nonetheless, the book does an excellent job of highlighting the main turning points in the history of privacy, like the invention of the telephone, and the recent rise of big data. It seemed to me that over the years people have changed from wanting to hide themselves, to willing to be know; although we still cling to a subtle desire for privacy and identity. In the conclusion, the author also raises the question of what it means to be a "known" citizen in today's day and age.
August 3, 2020
Sweeping history of the concept of privacy in American legal, social, and popular culture going from post-Civil War to a couple years ago (mid-2010s). Igo adeptly weaves between the 1930s Social Security Administration, the onslaught of marketing and psychology research into the psyche, citizens' expectations of "dossier culture", the changing political use of privacy in gender and sexuality, and the development of confessional memoirs and reality TV in the 1970s to 1990s. Out of necessity, there can't be a lot of specific detail, but if you want to learn about the US conception of privacy this is the place to start.
August 24, 2020
A lot of potential. I feel really bad giving it two stars, but in the end even though I got through about 250 pages (The last 220 were all footnotes!) I just couldn't push through. Obviously deeply researched and it had plenty of great anecdotes but it flowed poorly and seemed haphazard in what it was trying to get across. Could have used some heavy editing.
July 30, 2021
Reading for research background, but easily one of the most engaging, well-researched/documented and well-written treatises I have ever encountered. Not all was applicable to my research interests but I learned so much. The chapters on the creation of the Social Security Number and the evolution of the personal memoir were especially engaging. Not a weekend read, but worth every minute.
August 14, 2019
Stellar. A must-read.
January 29, 2020
This truly offered a multidisciplinary perspective on the topic and provided fascinating anecdotes and histories of what we've considered 'privacy' across time. Worth a read!
May 21, 2020
Fantastic!!!!
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August 6, 2021323.44809 I248 2020
August 17, 2023
At parts a little redundant and dry, but overall I learned a a lot (though most of it not entirely relevant to data privacy, exactly) & thought it was a valuable read.
July 7, 2023
A lot here. Changing perspectives on what public and private mean in USA.
October 6, 2019
Development of authenticity as a character trait in response to the dangerous and prevalent distraction of creating an inauthentic personality in duality with the social pressure to be one's self. It may be best to keep a private life and public, social life by limiting who gets to know these more intrinsic, fundamental and emotional aspects of a personality.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews