ANIMAL PRIVACY

Animal Privacy is a collaborative initiative between the Centre for Privacy Studies and the Kent Animal Humanities Network (University of Kent, UK) to explore the intersection between privacy studies and animal studies. The initiative started with an online workshop in November 2021.

The critical debates surrounding privacy have been predominantly human-centered, with privacy being usually understood as something we humans protect from other humans. Our understanding of privacy as a human right stems from the belief that it is part of our nature to establish barriers – physical, normative, or behavioral – between the individual and the collective. We thus tend to disregard the roles which other animals play in shaping our sense and space of privacy (for instance, as family pets). Likewise, we do not take seriously the idea of nonhuman animals’ entitlement or ‘right’ to their privacy or consider what forms nonhuman ‘privacy’ might take. This is despite the fact that our continuing encroachment into their spheres of life is endangering and dismantling the lives of other species. What new insights can we gain if we take non-human animals into account while exploring notions of privacy? Animal Privacy aims to explore how human-animal relationships historically affected how we understand, conceptualize, and act upon privacy, while also exploring how the concepts of privacy shed new light on other species and our relationships with them. Our discussions include all historical periods and geographical regions, as well as across a wide range of fields (humanities, social sciences, sciences), to foster cross-disciplinary approaches to the topic.

EVENT

ANIMAL / PRIVACY: Historical and Conceptual Approaches Online workshop, November 8-9, 2022. Program can be found at https://animalprivacy.wordpress.com/

PUBLICATION

Natacha Klein Käfer; Brett Mills; Kaori Nagai (eds.) ‘Animal Privacy: Historical and Conceptual Approaches.’ Special issue for the Privacy Studies Journal (under revisions after peer review).

MEMBERS: Natacha Klein Käfer (organizer), Brett Mills, and Kaori Nagai