Decolonizing 'privacy': Negotiating (in)visibility and surveillance in the global South

By reviewing surveillance capitalism as demarcated by S. Zuboff, this study accounts for the tale of how giving up one’s privacy in exchange for services and products was normalized. Instead of framing the intricate process of aspiring for social visibility and demanding privacy protection in the global South with Western theoretical lenses, this analysis turns to the decolonial perspective to raise other subtleties to the debate. To that end, this research adopts the Constructivist Grounded Theory (CGT) as the methodological approach. Based on semi-structured qualitative interviews (N=15) with Brazilian civil rights activists, the findings suggest that the best way to understand this negotiation is by establishing a set of codes and rules that deal with privacy management instead of developing a definition of privacy per se. Results also show that other factors have to be considered when conducting privacy studies, such as the kind of data individuals care about sharing. Finally, some strategies and recommendations made by the respondents (e.g., the creation of personas, obfuscation tactics, the use of Big Data by community leaders) indicate possible new solutions.