Granì (Jan 2017)
Privacy as the conventional concept: to the rationalization of the research strategy
Abstract
An original research strategy of the privacy analysis, which involves the understanding of this phenomenon as a conventional concept, has been suggested by the author. It has been shown that any attempt to bring the existing interpretation of any phenomenon to a common denominator look hopeless in the intellectual space, marked by the rejection of any «totalitarian» truths. However, this does not negate the need of the intellectual activity in the sphere of the clarification of the terminological and conceptual vocabulary of science. The idea of the conventional concept can be used as an attempt in such activities. The methodological tool of the conventional concept is a reflective approach which takes into account the dual nature of social reality and sets the corresponding epistemological view. It had been described in ideas of social analysis of P. Bourdieu and the hermeneutics of E. Giddens. The reflexive approach allows overcoming the limitations that are associated with principles of universalism, rationalism, historicism and objectivity, on which the classic «matrix» of European cognitive culture is settled. It is proved that the suggested optics has a special heuristics, which actualize the critical self-reflection of the researcher, and include on the one hand, the assessment of their own reflexive position, and on the other – the nature of the current social and cultural situation which defines the parameters of the scientific discourse’s creation. It has been grounded that the idea of conventionality with regard to privacy allows, firstly, combining more usefully methodological innovations and techniques to various areas of contemporary philosophy and social theory. It has been proved that the creation of privacy’s conventional concept as a part of the analytical work provides the primary ordering, the initial classification of disparate phenomena, semantic units that form the content of privacy and have a strong contextual nature. According to this, privacy is a product of the simultaneous interaction of social, individual, scientific, ideological, social and cultural factors which structure and formalize its phenomenology and epistemology, i.e. scientific order, the language of its description.
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