Given the preceding comments and the framework of the
present article, I am using two lines of approach to examine privacy in a cross-cultural context:
1. Analyze extreme cases of privacy. Some cultures have been described as having either minimum privacy, its members
apparently unable to keep from interacting with one another, or as having maximum privacy, with little contact among certain of its members. By considering each type of culture according to the logic of the preceding framework, I would expect to find compensatory mechanisms that modulate the apparent extreme instances of total privacy or total lack of privacy.
2. Analyzesocial relationships. A second approach is to examine various processes that occur in the context of social relationships in a given culture (see the right side of Figure 1). This could involve an analysis of privacy mechanisms used by males and females, husbands and wives, in-laws, and so on, to facilitate openness and closedness. For example, if cultural circumstances forced a son-in-law and mother-in-law to have frequent and/or socially sensitive contacts, one might expect to find compensatory mechanisms that permit them to avoid one another in certain ways. Thus, an analysis of specific social bonds might reveal a network of mechanisms by which people regulate their contacts.
A more systematic way to pursue this matter would be through the Human Relations Area Files or through systematic samples of cultures, such as Murdock’s (1967) Ethnographic Atlas. One could, for example, tap into cultures through processes related to interaction, such as joking taboos, avoidance mechanisms, sleeping arrangements, and so on. By grouping societies as high or low or present or absent on a particular behavior, one could then compare how each type of culture operated according to other areas of social interaction relevant to privacy regulation.