[ecrea] Workshop on Privacy and Data Protection in Europe: Traditions, Practices, and Discourses

CfP Call for papers
workshop
Workshop on Privacy and Data Protection in Europe: Traditions, 
Practices, and Discourses
Nov. 26/27, 2015
Heidelberg

REMINDER: CALL FOR PAPERS - deadline next Sunday, April 12, 2015

Workshop on
Privacy and Data Protection in Europe: Traditions, Practices, and Discourses

The so-called digital revolution poses major threats to our privacy, 
which is both a civil (or even human) right and an important democratic 
norm. Social media applications and big data innovations, while highly 
beneficial in many respects, affect the societal fabric of visibility 
and retreat, of rights, power, and legitimacy, often to the disadvantage 
of the citizen and/or consumer. Accordingly, data protection has become 
a contentious political issue. A transnational campaign for better data 
protection has emerged and gained support over recent years. Fundamental 
EU regulation is under way to create a harmonized European data 
protection regime. However, while the concomitant lobby battles in 
Brussels and the Snowden revelations have taught us a lot about economic 
and governmental interests in this new and complex area of the internet 
governance macrocosm, we know much less about the socio-political 
reality of privacy and data protection and how it varies across 
different countries,
  even within the European Union. Lacking such knowledge, the 
democratic legitimacy of the EU's efforts in internet governance and the 
chances and pitfalls for an international regulation in general are 
difficult to assess.
It is against this backdrop that we are planning an international 
workshop, in order to study the variety of privacy and data protection 
across Europe. In our theoretical framework, we assume on the one hand 
that privacy has pre-political roots and relevance, but that it also 
constitutes citizen-state and citizen-business relationships and is 
therefore an essentially political concept. On the other hand, we 
distinguish three levels on which conceptions of privacy manifest 
themselves, namely traditions, social practices and discourses (public 
or special). We expect privacy to vary considerably in these aspects 
across European countries. Thus, contributions should not deal primarily 
with (common) threats to privacy, but with questions that address 
socio-political differences in both fundamental conceptions of privacy 
and data protection regimes:

Traditions
?             Which administrative, legal and moral traditions and 
political cultures are constitutive for national data protection regimes?
?             What cultural factors or historical experiences affect 
political or legal regulation and practices of privacy and data protection?
Practices
?             Which social practices with regard to privacy and 
publicity can be observed?
?             Can practices be traced back to important turning points 
in history or to critical junctures (e.g. end of the soviet rule)?
?             How have new governmental and economic activities in the 
digital age affected citizens'/users' attitudes towards data protection 
so far?
Discourses
?             Which interpretive schemes appear in current debates about 
privacy and data protection?
?             Which optimistic or pessimistic narratives are told in 
response to the digital challenges?
?             Which traditions and practices are reflected, challenged 
or renegotiated in privacy discourses?

Authors are invited to submit papers that offer deep insights into the 
national socio-political backgrounds of privacy and data protection 
issues, covering any of the aspects mentioned above. The contributions 
should have a solid empirical foundation, but theoretical reflections 
are also welcome.
Further process: Abstracts of no more than 500 words should be submitted 
to Dr. Wolf J. Schünemann ((wolf.schuenemann /at/ ipw.uni-heidelberg.de) ) and 
Dr. Max-Otto Baumann ((max.baumann /at/ mill-institut.de) ) by April 12, 2015. 
Please indicate your institutional affiliation. Acceptance notifications 
will be sent until May 31, 2015. A two-day-workshop will take place in 
Heidelberg on November 26/27, 2015. After that, papers for an edited 
volume will be selected based on quality and coherence of the book. We 
hope to be able to provide travel grants for international participants.

If you have further questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Kind regards,
Max-Otto Baumann and Wolf J. Schünemann

Contact person: Dr. Wolf J. Schünemann
email: (wolf.schuenemann /at/ ipw.uni-heidelberg.de)
telephone: +40 6221 543186
Address: Institut für Politische Wissenschaft
Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg
Bergheimer Straße 58
69115 Heidelberg

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