PRIVATE LIVES, SECLUDED PLACES - PRIVACY AS POLITICAL POSSIBILITY

The theoretical writings that underpin contemporary liberal democracie s have all, in varying form, stressed the value of privacy as fundamen tal to the realisation of a civilised society. Yet it is ever more evi dent that privacy is now so threatened as to be practically lost to us already. Unless we turn our attention to the task of rethinking the n ature of our concern for privacy, and to the possibilities of its real isation and preservation, we may indeed fmd ourselves bereft of one of our most fundamental values. I make this claim in recognition of the fact that the condition of postmodernity is characterised by forces th at would erode many of the spaces and places in which privacy was prev iously grounded.