Privacy Orientations and Roles

In America, we often times say that value our right to privacy. Indeed the U.S. Supreme Court has made landmark rulings arguing that we have a constitutional right to privacy. While human beings have an innate propensity to affiliate with other human beings, humans also cannot tolerate extended physical contact with others and do have a need for privacy. However, how much privacy one needs, varies significantly across cultures. The U.S. and Morocco are two countries that have drastically different views on privacy. First, in his book on communication, Dr. Neuliep lays out four different types of privacy: solitude or being away from observation of others; intimacy, being with another person but away from the outside world; anonymity, or the state of being unknown in a crows; and reserve, or unwanted intrusion. The type and degree or privacy desired depends largely on the type of behavior in which one engages, the culture, and the individual personality traits.

Dr. Neuliep argues that in America, “men tend to score higher on isolation while women are higher on intimacy with family and friends.” Furthermore, in the U.S., different groups of people have different concerns regarding privacy. For example, as a college student, I worry about what North Central will do with the information collected about me in the future. However, if I had to try and contextualize my orientation to privacy, I would say that I am slightly more open than the average American but still value my privacy. I argue that I worry about an invasion of privacy more on a broad scale like Facebook selling my data than on a small scale (see image below).



However, in Morocco, they highly value their privacy from the outside as well. While inside their homes, they believe that is what separates them from the public space. That is where women do not have to cover and it is a sacred space for them and their families to be alone from others. Moroccans value the time that they have with their families inside their homes and believe that it is their shared space to do so. Moreover, it is seen as the public space is for men whereas the private space is for women.


Everyday, I play a variety of roles on a day-to-day basis in which have a set of norms and expectations that are associated with them. Being at North Central, my main role everyday is that of student, and even more specifically a senior. With this role, I am expected to go to class to everyday, take good notes, be attentive, and ask engaging questions that don’t make me seem overly knowledgeable. Moreover, because I am a senior, I am expected to know exactly what I am going to do when I graduate, where I want to do it and why. Lastly, being a political science student, I am not expected to be working on campaigns or knowing a plethora of statistics; instead the norm would be for me to sit back and let me male counterparts run the show. However, this is not how I operate and believe that this norm is meant to be broken.

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