The geographies and politics of fear

Abstract

Background This special issue arose from a collective sense of disappointment and frustration with prominent academic and policy related debates around 'the fear of crime'. Since its 'discovery' in the 1970s and 80s, fear has remained an important and obvious theme for academic and government researchers, the media and politicians. There is no denying the substance of fear in terms of media coverage, political manipulation and public discourse. Fear, whether it is quelled or stimulated, provides the capacity to both control and manipulate a variety of social and political discourses. Like any word with such powerful connotations, fear is a term that is controlled via processes of legitimisation, exclusion and prescribed interpretation. It is a word which in wider political terms is licensed to those whose fears are 'legitimised' by dominant political and media structures. At the same time its use is denied to those in the ranks of the 'deviant' or 'transgressive'. As we will show, the fears of the marginalised and power less are often relegated behind those who are, in reality, less vulnerable to crime. This collection of papers examines recent evidence on the patterning of fear, documenting some of the ways in which fear reflects, reshapes and reinforces social structures and power relations, and emphasising explanations which focus on social, political, sexual, race and class inequalities. The papers also examine 'fearism'--the manufactured and contested nature and use of fear of crime. The contributors challenge the way 'fear of crime' is defined and used within hegemonic discourses for the purposes of political agendas. They also examine how, in connection, fear is constructed within a range of distinct spatial arenas. In addressing these points, we argue that there are some evident deficiencies in the quality of much research which has been undertaken. The continued spread of myths and stereotypes by the media and through research has led to the failure by national and local policymakers to recognise and address the root causes of fear. We have been surprised by the paucity of academic work which focuses explicitly on the socio-political power relations involved in the fear of crime. The small number of exceptions which have forwarded critical and radical perspectives on fear have tended to be ignored by the mainstream. As we go on to argue below, most accounts of fear of crime developed by academics have been positivist, behaviouralist or individualistic, often with the aim of servicing policy, but rarely presenting a fundamental challenge to it. Politicizing fear of crime debates is important, then, not just to improve understanding of a large and complex field, but so that they can actively inform political responses mo re appropriately. The collection also focuses on the geographical aspects of fear. The location and situation of fear of crime, and the ways it is patterned, reflected and reinforced by the particularities of place, has a central role in its close association with patterns of marginalisation and exclusion. Each of the papers explores different aspects of these geographies. Human geography is currently seeing a reinvigoration of longstanding calls for geographers to become involved in more critical action research, and engaging to a greater degree with tackling pressing social issues through research (Kitchen and Hubbard, 1999). This new impetus is an appropriate backdrop for the research on fear of many of the contributors, as the papers tackle a number of issues where inequality and oppression are at the forefront, such as women's experiences of domestic violence; the fears of marginalized groups of young people; ethnic, sectarian and homophobic violence. In this introduction we begin with a discussion of what fear of crime is and where it came from. We describe the deficiencies of much research to date, and then outline a more critical perspective which focuses on the geographies and politics of fear as a framework for the papers which follow. …