Book part:

Privacy on Social Networking Sites within a culture of Exchange

The paper describes the relationship between the concept of privacy and a culture of exchange. First, I will ground a notion of a culture of exchange on a critical political economy analysis. Second, I will follow this line of argumentation by having a look at the realm of ideas within a culture of exchange. It is shown that current notions of privacy fall within the framework of possessive individualistic thinking. Third, I will show for social networking sites (SNS) that privacy and its supposed opponent surveillance are both related to private property and belong genuinely to a culture of exchange. In the concluding section, I will briefly discuss normative problems of a culture of exchange in general, its influence on SNS, and the issue of privacy.