City Of Fear Research Articles

Fear City, Cop City and Other Tales, a Call for Police Research

It has been noted that crime and enforcement are likely a defining part of an evolving leisure experience. The aims of this manuscript were to call for research to focus on this phenomenon of the shooting and killing of people, particularly Black citizenry, by law enforcement. State sanctioned violence has been consistently wrought in leisure spaces and settings since those 2014–2015 deaths that were noted previously in the Leisure Sciences article, “The Case of the 12-year-old Boy: Or, the Silence of and Relevance to Leisure Research”. An understanding of policing, not police officers, and an understanding of society, not social behavior are the needs in the research of a legitimate phenomenon that occurs within the space, time, and activities of leisure, sport, and tourism.

Rediscovering poverty: moneylending in the Republic of Ireland in the 1960s

AbstractIn 1969 R.T.É.'s 7 Days dealt with the issue of illegal moneylending, claiming that Dublin was ‘a city of fear’ where 500 unlicensed moneylenders used violence as a tool to collect debts. The Fianna Fáil government rejected the suggestion that loan sharking was widespread and that Gardaí responses to it were ineffectual; a tribunal of inquiry was established to investigate 7 Days. Previous analyses situated these events within the context of government concerns over the influence of television journalism. This article takes a different approach, analysing moneylending ― rather than 7 Days ― within the context of the rediscovery of poverty during the 1960s. It examines how social and economic changes, including the growth of consumer credit and the re-housing of large numbers of Dubliners, combined to make illegal moneylending more visible. Historical accounts of Ireland in the 1960s have had a top down focus on economic policy and growth. Here, the focus is shifted to personal rather state finances to offer a more nuanced portrayal of a decade often understood as a boom one. Moreover, analysing the nature and conclusions of the tribunal lays bare the contemporary resistance to those attempting to reframe the problem of poverty.

Welcome to fear city: crime film, crisis and the urban imagination

O livro Welcome to fear city: crime film, crisis and the urban imagination apresenta uma análise histórica e estética de filmes policiais de locação produzidos na década de 1970 nos Estados Unidos da América. Ao discorrer sobre crises urbanas do período, refletidas em novas paisagens arquitetônicas, destaques da imprensa e movimentos sociopolíticos, Nathan Holmes argumenta que os filmes de crime, em sua diversidade, tocaram os espaços públicos de maneira contundente, inclusive contrastando a vivacidade e desordem dos centros urbanos com a gradativa homogeneização suburbana.

Fear City: New York's Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics by Kim Phillips-Fein

Reviewed by: Fear City: New York's Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics by Kim Phillips-Fein Brian D. Goldstein (bio) Fear City: New York's Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics. By Kim Phillips-Fein. (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2017. Pp. 416. $32.00 cloth; $22.00 paper; $9.99 ebook) In Fear City: New York's Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics, Kim Phillips-Fein opens the lid on one of the iconic moments in the postwar history of the American city: New York City's near default in 1975. The city approached bankruptcy as a series of massive debt obligations came due. President Gerald Ford, quite famously, refused to provide the funding that the city needed, a moment encapsulated in the famous New York Daily News headline of October 1975: "Ford to City: Drop Dead." As the common story goes, the city borrowed profligately for decades to fund social programs it could not afford, bankruptcy was not an option, and restructuring the city in the aftermath was inevitable. New York had no choice but to slash its famed social safety net, which included free college tuition, neighborhood hospitals, and affordable subway fares. It could not have been any other way. [End Page 648] Yet the great contribution of Phillips-Fein's book is to argue that, in fact, none of the history as it unfolded was inevitable. Austerity, she writes, was "a political choice" (p. 10). And the path to austerity was never black and white. The city borrowed extensively, sometimes using problematic accounting measures, but banks played their part by buying debt eagerly. Ford put his foot down in refusing to provide financial aid during the most fraught months of the crisis not just to teach a financial lesson, but also because he saw an opportunity to impose a free market political ideology that would burnish his conservative credentials. And experts—those who guided harsh cuts through new entities like the Municipal Assistance Corporation and the Emergency Financial Control Board—were not objective technocrats. They were frequently members of the city's banking and business elite, unelected, and eager to ensure that financial institutions received the money they were owed before social obligations were met. As bankruptcy approached, those who stood to profit from it ideologically or financially used it to create crisis conditions. These, in turn, became justification for a fundamental restructuring of the supportive role the city had played for its citizens. "Over time," Phillips-Fein writes, "the fear of bankruptcy took on a life of its own" (p. 67). This context meant that other approaches—like declaring bankruptcy and making more balanced and equitable cuts—became seemingly impossible, though in fact they never were. In explaining this, Phillips-Fein gives dimension to actors often flattened in accounts of the crisis, showing that figures like Mayor Abraham Beame and President Ford often had choices. Everyday New Yorkers, those most affected on a daily basis by cuts to schools, police, garbage pickup, health care, and fire stations, did not roll over in the face of austerity. Rather, they actively pushed back against a city that shifted away from its ambition to lift up the middle and working classes. Such efforts—Adam Veneski and the People's Firehouse, student and faculty efforts to save Hostos Community College of the City University of New York—are some of the most compelling in the book. Even more such stories would have been welcome, for they provide clear evidence of [End Page 649] the multiple visions at play in this history. Yet the lack of equal representation of such voices is surely evidence of the degree to which elites dominated in determining what sacrifices would be made. Though a New York story, the way in which these events unfolded had national and even international reverberations, as Phillips-Fein argues. New York City emerged a different city after this but so did cities in general. The generosity of America's biggest metropolis came to be cast as irresponsible, making it less likely that other urban centers would follow in its path. Instead, a new vision of the role of municipal government took hold, one...

China and the Politics of Cross–Cultural Representation in Interwar European Fiction

In his article "China and the Politics of Cross–Cultural Representation in Interwar European Fiction" Carles Prado-Fonts analyzes Joan Crespi's La ciutat de la por (The City of Fear, 1930) to illustrate the varied representations of China in interwar Europe. In the 1920s and 1930s, a plurality of views on China and the Chinese people became widespread across different parts of Europe, mainly shaped by English, French, and German representations. Contradictory images of China coexisted in literature, thought, and popular culture. Crespi's work exemplifies these contradictions: China appears as both an attainable reality and an unreachable fantasy, two tropes that prevailed in Catalan society after having been adapted from the European imagery. The novel responds to these contradictory discourses by launching a radical critique of Western modernity imposed on China. This article argues that representing China from Catalonia (or from the rest of Spain) not only implied the import of data and knowledge from European sources but also the transculturation of formal aspects and a subordination of agency. By showing how difficult it was to imagine China from the periphery of Europe without the mediation of these European centers, this article rethinks the politics of cross-cultural circulation in a noncolonizer, noncolonized context.

Ludocracia: El juego como herramienta de revitalización urbana en la ciudad interfaz

Vivimos en la ciudad del miedo. La excesiva regulación y la categorización de lo que sucede en nuestro entorno nos han ceñido a unas reglas del juego limitadas, en las que queda poco margen para la improvisación, la imaginación y las emociones. La errónea incorporación de las tecnologías ha aumentado el grado de control que se tiene sobre variables medibles basando en ellas sus políticas públicas. Esta despreocupación por las variables intangibles que representan la vida humana de las ciudades ha provocado, junto a la introducción de las TICs en nuestra rutina, el traslado del espacio público a la esfera digital: un espacio virtual donde obtener la libertad y recuperar el debate que se ha perdido en el espacio público físico. Ante esta nueva dualidad físico-digital del espacio público nos planteamos la posible conexión de ambos con la ciudad como interfaz. La ludificación de los procesos de las ciudades, la hibridación físico-digital en juegos urbanos o el concepto Lighter & Quicker & Cheaper están presentes en proyectos innovadores contemporáneos reseñados más adelante. Como propuesta de futuro apostaremos por la ludocracia que se sirve del juego como mecanismo accionador para la reconquista del espacio público físico mostrando la ciudad como un tablero de juego aumentado.

Documentary noir in the city of fear: Feminicide, impunity and grassroots communication in Ciudad Juarez

The emergence of a systematic campaign of horrific violence directed at women and girls in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez has become a focus of intense media and activist attention over the last two decades. While the mainstream media devoted much attention to ravaged bodies and sensational theories, state officials reacted to the crimes with a victim-blaming narrative that, activists have argued, provided a lethal accelerant to the violence. This paper explores the role of documentary film in the investigation and politicization of the murders and disappearances of women in Juarez. Along with activists and journalists, critical documentary filmmakers have been among the primary investigators of the crimes. In this paper, I argue that these grassroots media practices have been instrumental in opening spaces of communication that have been enclosed by pervasive fear and systemic insecurity. I pay specific attention to the ways in which Lourdes Portillo’s 2001 documentary Señorita Extraviada interrogates the crimes politically. Through its critical, engaged approach to the aesthetics and politics of evidence, I argue, the film poses a counter-narrative to the neoliberal state’s discourse of responsibilization and individualization in a context of systemic insecurity.

Reappropriating the City of Fear

Fear is seen to be one of the defining political emotions of late modernity. Filmmakers, sociologists, artists, philosophers, and pundits see fear everywhere. If fear is a way of life, the contemporary city is seen by many to be one of its most prominent and productive social laboratories. But while fear is seen to be so politically significant, the way it is studied often both naturalizes and exteriorizes fear from politics. As a result, fear’s antagonistic status as both a social relation and an arena of political action is submerged. In this article, I propose a different approach to thinking about, and acting in, the city of fear. By taking social struggles as our starting point, the city of fear becomes recognizable as a platform for social action, a place for the elaboration of a theory and practice of social change, a staging ground for the reappropriation of the city.

Fear Disarmed

AbstractFear is seen to be one of the defining political emotions of late modernity. Sociologists, artists, philosophers, activists, and pundits see fear everywhere. If fear has become a way of life, the contemporary city is seen to be one of its most prominent and productive social laboratories. However, while the growing fear scholarship argues that is such a politically significant emotion, the way it is studied often both naturalizes and exteriorizes fear from politics. As a result, fear’s antagonistic status as both a social relation and an arena of political action is submerged. In this article I raise the productive role of social protest and propose a different approach to thinking about, and acting in, the city of fear.

City of Fear: Reimagining Buenos Aires in Contemporary Argentine Cinema

Argentine cinema has experienced a rebirth since the late 1990s, despite the country’s economic crisis. Buenos Aires, long a key setting for the nation’s films, has not escaped the negative impact of the crisis, yet filmmaking in the capital has thrived. This article explores the radically different presentation of the city since the first explosion of film in Argentina after the end of the military dictatorship of 1976–1983. It takes Luis Puenzo’s controversial La historia oficial as a starting point for a reflection on the current presentation of Buenos Aires as a city plagued by fear in productions from the late 1990s to the early twenty‐first century.

City of Fear or Open City?

Richard Estes' image of a view of Manhattan from the Staten Island Ferry before September 11, 2001 juxtaposes two symbols representing the choice John Friedmann poses for us in his Longer View. On the right are the World Trade Center towers, now a symbol of America's vulnerability and possible need to retrench and protect itself. On the left is the Statue of Liberty, welcoming everyone to an open city and an open nation, despite the danger this might entail. Friedmann's essay argues for steering a course toward openness, with its many associated responsibilities and privileges. Estes is one of the best known artists of the photorealism movement in painting. Originally from Illinois, he studied at the Art Institute of Chicago before working as a commercial artist in publishing and advertising and then painting full time. His works hang in The Art Institute of Chicago, the Guggenheim Museum and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, DC, among others. He currently lives and works in New York and Maine. In the aftermath of September 11, there is a heightened sense of fear in our country and much talk about how to protect ourselves against terrorists and other threats to our lives and peace of mind. To counter the natural desire to retreat into fortress America, I propose a more positive strategy, an agenda for action to create what I call the Open City. Four aspects of this agenda are discussed: reducing the urban footprint, drafting charters of local citizenship, meeting basic human needs, and working towards new forms of city-regional governance. This article proposes the Open City as a series of experimental projects in major metropolitan regions across the country, arguing that planners have the requisite powers to set such projects in motion. Success in carrying them out would, at the same time, serve as an inspiration for cities beyond our own borders.

Behind the Scenes: Ward Just's Washington

The zone [Vietnam] ... was the place where modern American History begins. -American Blues Ward Just's 1982 novel In the City of Fear, part political allegory, part satire, delineates the self-centered, self-protective nature of the self-proclaimed Movers and Shakers inside the beltway whose moral inertia allowed the Vietnam War to continue for eight long years. The use of reverse chronological order, revealing two decades of life as usual in Washington, does not hide the fact influential Washingtonians are rewarded when most cautious; discretion, clandestine activities frequently the better part of valor. In 1981, when the novel begins, Piatt Warden, most circumspect congressman for the last eighteen years, can expect to earn the title of Senate Whip, while the insider's insider, the ultimate problem solver, Henry Costello, is the President's choice to chair the party. The ethical price both men have paid for success is outlined in the long central section of the novel, set in 1970 or 1971, at Washington dinner party where striking revelations outnumber the courses. The novel concludes in October 1963 (one month before, as Senator Ralph Yarborough depicted the Kennedy assassination, Excalibur sunk beneath the waves) with suspicious and fatal car accident of young White House staffer, Dennis McDonnough, who advised John F. Kennedy to withdraw from Vietnam. Ward Just's usually grim vision of the best and the brightest is rarely compassionate, frequently knowing. Ethical Context Obliquely, Just establishes ethical lineage, as one person after another, at exclusive dinner, party either reminisces about the past or narrates stories unveil it. Hosting the function are Teddy Carney, journalist, and wife Jo; attending are various spokespersons for the CIA, government, and military: Max Cather, cynical covert operations analyst, and spouse; Piatt Warden, U. S. Representative, and wife Marina; Sheila Dennehey, CIA staffer specializing in psychological profiles, and Sam Joyce, colonel in the Army. To understand the ethical shortsightedness of Washington insiders, Just implies, one must see how it derived from the postwar period of the late 1940s. Late in the evening Sam reminisces about pirate (189), father, living proof of the continuity of events (189). Already in nineties in 1971, old Ben Joyce is both transition figure as well as inspiration. Even at the time of this party, an invitation to apartment . . . was considered to be second only to one to the White House itself (191). As if to underline revered reputation among insiders, Henry Costello confides to Sam, An endorsement from Ben Joyce is like endorsement from God (206). In the immediate postwar years old Ben was visionary: he quickly saw Washington was mysterious to businessman; it was as mysterious as Hollywood. And the secret was not to demystify, it was to present oneself as necromancer, magician. was the first to see the government would become the nation's greatest corporation, great sea of money, greater even than DuPont or General Motors; he was the first to see, and the first to act. (191) His rise from hanging judge to Senator, sage, and finally counselor, seemed both effortless and inevitable (190). Because of wealth, his knowledge of the secrets of the men in power, as well as personality and will and sheer longevity (190), he is the envy of many Washingtonian. Yet is something not quite genuine about old Ben. He forgot, we are told, that which was inconvenient (190). Also, he is a man rather attracted to dark corners, and pleased to find so many of them; and so much company when he got there (195). Especially benighted is of duty easy to deny, which old Ben labels Misprision: passive misconduct, benign neglect (194). With knowledge of misprision comes fortune and power. …