Private life, or life in the private sphere, refers to individual and social activities that happen outside and separate from the public sphere. Family and domestic life, and activities with friends, are some of the best examples of private life. Privacy refers to the desire of individuals to keep information regarding their private lives not readily available to other individuals, institutions, and the government. Privacy also refers to social rules or laws that protect the right of an individual to safeguard information regarding his or her private life. How strong the right to privacy and what information can be kept private differ across time and societies. Many small-scale societies and communities don’t respect individuals’ right to privacy. The first time privacy and the private sphere were officially recognized was in the 18th and 19th centuries, with the emergence of democracy and individual political rights and freedoms enshrined in constitutions and laws. In the 21st century, new technologies allowed new types of invasions of privacy (digital hacking and monitoring, videocameras, drug testing, and DNA analysis), both from other individuals and governments. Those new technologies invigorated new discussions regarding privacy and safety.    

The spatial component of private life is also important, as some places are regarded beyond public scrutiny, some places are considered semi-public (i.e., small restaurants and bars), while other spaces are considered public, as all activities that happen in those spaces are assumed to be public. With the development of the internet and social networks, virtual spaces (private, semi-public, and public)  started expanding and became increasingly more important. Interpersonal relations in private spaces are most often based on closeness and intimacy, while public interpersonal relations are mostly based on rationality and practical instrumentality.  

Classical liberal authors cherished the right to privacy as one of the most important individual freedoms. On the other hand, conservatives and feminists are more critical of the absolute right to privacy, reasoning that privacy allows individuals to engage in immoral or illegal activities. The main difference between conservatives and feminists is in what they perceive as immoral activity. Conservatives are afraid that privacy allows people to engage in activities that go against tradition or religious rules, while feminists argue that the right to privacy protects patriarchal oppression (economic, emotional, physical, and sexual) of women and small children in the home by the adult males. According to Sylvia Walby, private patriarchy refers to gender relations in the household and family and was most pronounced in earlier periods when women were forbidden to enter the public sphere. 

Erving Goffman, in his book Stigma (1963), studies how a stigmatized person performs "information control" to keep private information that could be harmful if found out. This control of information is essential for three aspects of our identity: personal, social, and ego. Personal identity contains our life history and makes us unique; social identity is a perception that others have of us through the groups to which we belong; the ego is that aspect of personality that relates to what we think of ourselves. 

In The Purchase of Intimacy (2005), Viviana Zelizer introduces the theoretical concept of "circuits of commerce," which refers to how the relationship between private life and the economy is regulated in different social circumstances, and each social situation has its own specific circuit of commerce. Each circuit of commerce consists of four elements: the relationship between people, the means of exchange, the type of transaction, and the boundaries within which it operates. Actors are constantly doing relational work to determine and define all four aspects of each of the circuits of commerce.

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