| Individual privacy has been viewed as a central value in modern Western societies. Yet no theory relating individual privacy to modernization has been presented.;In this dissertation individual privacy is defined as the two-way control of personal information from or to family members, the community, other individuals, and the state government. Using such a conceptual framework, I have conducted interviews that sample ninety-eight Chinese respondents living in rural, urban, and American areas, and relate the issue of individual privacy to theories of modernization.;The extant literature suggests that individual privacy in modernized societies is associated with the process of rationalization and legal ideas about citizenship, citizen's rights and private property. However in contrast in modernizing Chinese society privacy, to the extent that it exists, is based on Confucian ethics. Confucian ethics of individual privacy attempt to govern the flow of information in ways promoting more intimacy and less reserve, confidentiality, secrecy, reclusion, and seclusion between individuals, family members, the community, or the state government. Based on my empirical data, I conclude that notions of individual privacy based on Confucian ethics tend to have a negative impact on processes of modernization in China both directly and indirectly as expressed it may contribute to economic inefficiency, social conflict and anomie, and inhibition of creativity. My study shows that modernizing social and economic environments of China do not necessarily result in the rationalization of the traditional Confucian ethics of individual privacy.;I conclude that those theories emphasizing the importance of Confucian ethics in Chinese processes of modernization do not apply to individual privacy at least. An alternative way to promote the process of modernization in Chinese society is to rationalize the Confucian ethics of individual privacy, which is a task beyond the scope of this dissertation. With the rise in importance of information technology, the control of personal information in a modernizing country such as China becomes of ever greater importance and offers new challenges for our comparative understanding of societies and for public policy. |
