The Risk Society in an Age of Anxiety: Situating Fear of Crime

Author(s): Wendy Hollway and Tony Jefferson

Source: The British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 48, No. 2 (Jun., 1997), pp. 255-266
Published by: Wiley on behalf of The London School of Economics and Political Science
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Wendy Hollway and TonyJefferson

The risk society in an age of anxiety: situating

fear of crime*

ABSTRACT

As many now recognize, fear of crime is an inadequately theorized concept. In

particular, it is premissed on rational, calculating individuals who routinely mis-
calculate their 'true' risk of crime. Hence the repeatedly found paradox that the
least at risk group (elderly females) are most fearful. The risk literature has
adopted a cultural/anthropological rather than an individual perspective, but, in
so doing has not succeeded in retheorizing the noiion of the rationally calculat-
ing subject it critiques (Douglas), even if rational calculations are no longer poss-
ible in today's 'risk society' (Beck). We develop these cultural perspectives in a
way which is founded on a post-structuralist theory of individuals wherein inter-
subjective defending against anxiety replaces rational calculation as central to the
understanding of fear. Not only does this re-link the concepts of fear and anxiety,
cuently divorced in the fear of crime debate, but it offers the prospect of under-
standing the paradoxical mismatch between risk and fear at both the level of the
individual and of society.

. . . .

WORDS: Rlsk; fear; crlme; anxlety; modernlty

INTRODUCTION

One of the essential characteristics of a critical sociology is a refusal to

be satisfied with merely describing the regularities discerned in society.
Extending the range of apprehensible regularities - for instance by using
statistical procedures and by uncovering latent structures in statistical
data - is certainly among its tasks. We go beyond this, however, if we ask
how society itself explains and handles deviance from the norm, misfor-
tune, and the unanticipated occurrence. (Luhmann 1991: vii)

We write this paper in a week which witnessed rioting in Luton, Belfast and
Leeds and the release of new figures on black crime in the capital by the
Metropolitan Commissioner. However dissimilar these events in their par-
ticulars, they would probably all be regarded as examples of Luhmann's
'deviance from the norm, misfortune and the unanticipated occurrence'.
More specifically, they bear on crime and feed into people's fears and anx-
ieties on that score. In other words, they contribute in some way to fear of

Brit. Jnl. of tSociologyVolume no. 48 Issue no. 2 June 1997 ISSN 0007-1315 <? London School of Economics 1997

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 Wendy EIollway and Tony Jefferson

256

crime. Our task, following Luhmann's

sociology, is to explore how fear of crime, arguably now a generic feature
of modern, developed societies, is explained and handled by society. This
will also involve what Luhmann omits to rnention, namely, attention to how
social explanation becomes psychic reality.
Despite a now voluminous literature, it would be fair to say that the area
remains conceptually underdeveloped (Sparks 1992): in other words, the
work remains largely at the descriptive, empirical level. In the first place, fear
of crime is a very ill-defined concept (Ferraro 1995: 22), routinely 'measured
by responses to the question "how safe do you feel walking alone in this area
after dark?"' (Box, Hale and Andrews 1988: 343).1 But since 'the most
common form of behavioural adaptation to crime is avoiding unsafe areas
at night' (Ferraro 1995: 104), the fear - as wel] as the anticipated crime -
being tapped is not only extremely narrow and individualistic, it is also
largely hypothetical.2 However, even the more social definitions do not move
beyond uncovering Luhmann's 'latent structures in statistical data': for
example, where empirical factors such as 'gender, age, race, neighbourhood
cohesion, confidence in the police, and level of incivility, experience of vic-
timization, perception of risk and assessment of offence seriousness' are
brought together into a 'theoretical' model and then subjected to sophisti-
cated multivariate analysis (Box, Hale and Andrews 1988: 340).
Implicit in the narrow definition of fear is a second key concept, namely
risk. In other words, the assumption behind the question 'how safe do you
feel walking alone in this area after dark' is that the more 'at risk' (of vic-
timization) you feel, the more fearful you will be, and vice versa. Indeed, it
could be said that the entire academic (and political) debate about fear of
crime in Britain is driven by the relationship between risk (ofvictimization)
and fear. Disagreement centres on whether people's levels of fear match
their risk of victimization - the so-called 'new realist' position (for example,
Jones, MacLean and Young 1986) - or whether such fears are dispropor-
tionate - the official Home Office position (for example, Hough and
Mayhew 1985).
To his surprise, Ferraro found 'that most previous research did not
explicitly consider the influence of risk or perceived risk of crime on fear'
(1995: xiii-xiv) - an omission which led him to make risk central to his
work. Interestingly, Ferraro is one of the few people who mentions the term
'anxiety', a term which could be regarded as a close cognate of 'fear'.
Indeed, he goes so far as to include it in his definition of fear of crime: 'an
emotional reaction of dread or anxiety to crime or symbols that a person
associates with crime' (op. cit.: xiii). Thereafter, however, it largely disap-
pears from view, not even rating an index entry.
It would seem fair to say, then, that all the relevant concepts in the debate
- fear, crime, risk, anxiety- are undertheorized. Sometimes deployed in a
social fashion, though more often in a narrow, individualistic way, they are
descriptive categories and largely simple take-ups from everyday common-
sensical usage.

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The risk society in an age of anxiety 257

The theoretical limitations of the fear of crime debate do not seem to

have been overcome in the latest offering in this field, namely Ferraro's
book Fear of Crime: Intertrreting Victimization Risk (1995), despite its purport-
ing to be a critical intervention. First, as we have already shown, he defines
his object. Second, he includes measures of risk, both 'official' and per-
ceived. Third, he attempts to integrate macro and micro levels of analysis.
He proposes a model of how neighbourhood characteristics and personal
characteristics interact to produce differential perceptions of risk which, in
turn, produce either fearful or adaptive reactions (or both) . Fourth, he tests
this model using an enlarged measure of fear of crime (based on responses
to ten stranger-crime 'scenarios'), including a range of property and per-
sonal crimes, an 'official risk' rating (using Uniform Crime Report data)
and a notion of perceived risk.
One might be forgiven for expecting more from the result, given Ferraro's
critical starting point, the boldness of his attempt to integrate macro and
micro, the level of technical sophistication and the effort to include people's
perceptions of events. His conclusions on victimization can be summarized
thus: when you view 'perceived risk as the pivotal factor influencing fear of
crime' (Ferraro 1995: xiv), the 'victimization/fear' paradox by age - the
notion that the least likely to be victimized, the old, are the most fearful -
disappears, and women's greater fear generally is largely explained by their
fear of sexual assault. In other words, all this sophisticated modeling, testing,
analysing, and interpreting serves to reinforce the new realist position that
people's perceptions of their risk of victimization is broadly accurate: 'Fear
of crime is not typically a disorder of the person, it is most often a symptom
of a conspicuously incivil world' (Wilson 1993, cited by Ferraro 1995: 120).
To put it bluntly: 'neither older people nor their interpretation of victim-
ization risk are the problem. Crime is' (Ferraro 1995: 83).
The idea that crime is unproblematically 'a problem' and that people's
perceptions are unproblematically 'real' starkly pose the two key problems
with this line of research. They also deliver the twin thrusts of our endeav-
our. First, we attempt to connect fear of crime, notjust with neighbourhood
crime rates, incivilities and the rest of Ferraro's essentially parochial
'macro' concerns, where crime is given (actually he takes only stranger-
crime), but with a changing, historical, socio-political formation in which
questions of order and control are central, and in which, therefore 'crime'
and 'fear of crime' are always politically constructed. Second, we attempt
to explore the relationship between discourses of fear and individual
biographies. Ferraro's sensitivity to people's perceptions of risk has no
account of 'perception' beyond the social factors that 'realistically' influ-
ence it. This may account for why his 'risk interpretation' model, which
specified two outcomes (fear and constrained behaviour), only managed to
explain about half the variance in each (1995: 121). Our attempt at re-
theorization, therefore, will take up both these strands in turn, say some-
thing about the connection7 and then briefly illustrate using our (still rather
raw) case material.

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 Wendy Hollway and Tony Jefferson

258

FEAR OF CRIME, MODERNI1Y AND RISK

In The Risk Societw Beck uses risk as the central analytical tool for under-
standing the social fortns characteristic of modernization and late mod-
ernity (which he calls reflexive modernity). The influence of'the culture
of scientism' (Beck 1992: 3) is central to the risk society because
the consequences of scientific and industrial development [are] a set of
risks and hazards which are no longer limited in time and space and for
which no-one can be held accountable. (Beck 1992: 2)

This unknowability has profound effects on the social world in its entirety,
including on relevant forms of control and resistance.
For Beck, the new moral questions are about the allocation of risks,
rather than the allocation of wealth (Douglas 1994: 45) . The importance of
Beck's arguments, for us, is that risk is understood as pervasive in late mod-
ernity. When fear of crime and risk of victimization are considered in this
light, they can no longer be looked at in isolation, but must be addressed
in the political context of how multifarious risks are known and regulated.
Beck draws a distinction between, for example, the risk of job loss, which
is clear through 'independent knowledge', and the risk of DDT in the tea
people drink, where 'their victimization is not determinable by their own
cognitive means', but depends on external [expert scientific] knowledge
(Beck 1992: 53). This issue is not primarily one of individual risk percep-
tion (though risk analysis has construed it as such, Douglas 1986), but a
political question: in whose hands lies the representation of different cat-
egories of risk such as environmental hazards or, what interests us, risk of
criminal victimization, and with what political effects?
For Douglas, situating it comparatively, risk is always a political and moral
issue

The theme, well known to anthropologists, is that at all places at all times
the universe is moralized and politicized. Disasters that befoul the air
and soil and poison the water are generally turned to political account:
someone already unpopular is going to be blamed for it. (Douglas 1994:
5)

Misfortunes have always been significant through social regulative

systems of blame. However, the notion of risk is a modern production 'that
admirably serves the forensic needs of the new global culture' (Douglas
1994: 22) . The sub-discipline of risk perception, she points out, arose in the
1960s as a result of the risk from new technologies, and was concerned with
the issue of public tolerance for risks (Douglas 1986: 19). Risk is about
'trying to turn uncertainties into probabilities' (Douglas 1986: 42), thus
making them accessible to impersonal adrninistrative regulation, based on
scientific principles, which evacuate the moral and political realm.
By creating a language of risk through using the concept of probability,
science has accomplished a transformation of the language of misfortune

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The risk society in an age of anxiety 259

and danger, with the implication that calculaung individuals then modiiS
their behaviour according to rational decisions. Risks then become ascer-
tainable and thus, in principle, individuals are able to banish uncertainty

How much risk is a matter for experts, but it is taken for granted that the
matter is ascertainable. Anyone who insists that there is a high degree of
uncertainty is taken to be opting out of accountability. (Douglas 1994:
30)

However, the moral and political dimension of blaming is not banished by

the modern risk discourse, rather it is expressed in the modern claim that
Sreal blaming' is possible, a claim that Douglas regards as a fantasy (1994:
7). Douglas contests the claim of scientific rationality and certainty. In com-
paring 'primitive' and 'modern' reasoning about blame, she argues that the
modern belief in probabilistic risk analysis functions rather like the primi-
tive denial of natural death; that is as a defence against uncertainty
(Douglas 1994: 3). In practice, cultures of blame, whether 'primitive' or
'modern', fulfil social regulation functions. Douglas identifies two primary
ones: victim blaming which facilitates internal social control and outsider
blaming which enhances loyalty (Douglas 1986: 59). Fear of crime, which
is essentially fear of crime by outsiders, fits neatly into the latter category.
In this way, Douglas locates the modern belief in real blaming and the wider
dominance of a probabilistic risk discourse firmly in the political and moral
realm of modernity's search for order and certainty.
The desire to eliminate uncertainty, evident in the modern quest for
mathematically calculated risks with 'blame' scientifically assigned, is also
at the heart of Bauman's conceptualization of modernity. For him, mod-
ernity's task of tasks is the production of order

Among the multitude of impossible tasks that modernity set itself and
that made modernity into what it is, the task of order (more precisely
and most importantly, of order as a task) stands out- as the least poss-
ible among the impossible and the least disposable among the indis-
pensable; indeed, as the archetype for all other tasks, one that renders
all other tasks mere metaphors of itself. (Bauman 1991: 4)

According to Bauman, this struggle for order, always doomed to be lost, is

essentially a flight from the ambivalence at the heart of order's opposite,
namely, chaos. Thus the central elements of the modernist project- the
'legislative ambitions of philosophical reason', the 'gardening ambitions of
the state' and the 'ordering ambitions of applied sciences' were all pitted
against the threat of 'underdetermination/ambivalence/contingency' and
'made its elimination one of the main foci imaginarii of social order'
(Bauman 1991: 15-16).
Thus whether the present is best conceptualized as late or post-
modernity, it presents threats to beliefs in certainty and order which are
central in the 'great modern campaign against ambivalence', which
Bauman regards as the most important feature of the human condition

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 Wendy Hollway and Tony Jefferson
260

(1991: 16). While Bauman believes that we have to get used to the idea of
'living without foundatonss under conditions of ' admitted contingency'
(ibid.) we would stress the psychological difficulty of such an achievement.
While conditions characterisuc of the risk society coexist with the defences
against anxiety precipitated by uncertainty, people will be drawn to dis-
courses and practices which appear to offer the hope of order or control.
Within this conceptualization of modernity, the war against crime is but
one of the 'multituds of local battles for order' within the ceaseless (and
unwinnable) 'war against chaos' (Bauman 19'91: 11). Arguably criminol-
ogyss contributon to the modernist project has been to produce a never-
ending supply of blameable scapegoats; ffie dishonest, inhumane,
disorderly criminal 'Other' to society's truthful, humane, orderly 'self9. As
Bauman argues, the pracaces of classification/segregation; for example the
production of the stranger, were central to the project of order-building.
Probably the two most signiElcant 'strangers' in modern societies are the
'criminals and the 'racial' (leaving aside the question of women as 'other) .
Certainly fear of the alarming increase in juvenile crime in early nineteenth-
century London, as well as the fear of 'King Mob', produced the most sig-
nificant modern agency of social control the new police. Thereafter, nearly
two centuries of police 'ordering' practices have produced a gala7Qy of 'folk
devils'.3 Though different at different times, these folk devils tend to share
certain features which make the fear of crime discourse such a powerful
modernist tool in the quest for order, in contrast to Beck's unknowable risks
of late modernity.
First, the risks focused on in fear of crime discourse tend to have indi-
vidual identifiable victims and individual identifiable offenders. This makes
them knowable. Indeed, where crimes do not have a knowable victim (for
example, tax evasion) or an easily identifiable offender (for examples
dumping toxic wa<ste) they tend not to become part of 'fear of crime'
(witness Ferraro 1995). Second, oSenders tend to be relauvely powerless
(given the power of the powerful to resist the criminal label). This makes
them decisionable (actionable). Third, offenders tend to be sstrangers', rather
than known others, which helps explain why the key measure of fear of
crims is premised so unselfconsciously on sstrarlger danger'. Crimes
between familiars therefore tend not to get treated as crimes. This blaming
of the outsider builds loyalty and this assists social cohesion, as Douglas
reminds us. It also renders the problem potentially controllable (even though
the supply of 'criminals' is apparently endless).

F EAR OF CRIME, ANXIETY AND THE MISSING SUBJECT

Despite the highly sociologlcal nature of his analysis of late modernity,

Giddens depends centrally on the concept of anxiety, which for him is an
inevitable part of the human condition. Giddens does not assume a simple
link between anxiety and actual risk or bet:ween anxiety and the risk culture.

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The risk society in an age of anxiety

162

Neither does he assume that high anxiety is a product of modernity: 'the

modern age is not specifically one of high anxiety . . . but the content and
form of prevalent anxiety certainly have become altered' (Giddens 1991:
32). The later modern settings which provide this content and form are to
do with disembedding, reflexivity and 'circumstances of uncertainty and
multiple choice' (Giddens, 1991: 3). These disonguish them both from a
traditonal order characterized by 'the suretes of traditon and habit' and
from the ideal of modernity, 'the certitude of rational knowledge' (1991:
2). In such circumstances Strust and risk have particular application' (1991:
3).
Following Winrlicott, Giddens sees trust as normally vested in caretakers
in early life and as prosiding 'a sort of emotional inoculation against exiv
tential anxieties' (1991: 39). If it weren't for this trust, which is variably
achieved over the course of a child's development, 'every human individual
could . . . be overwhelmed by anxieties about risks which are implied by the
very business of living' (ibid.).
Basically Giddens is arguing that 'anxiety has to be understood in relaton
to the overall security system the individual develops, rather than only as a
situationally specific phenomenon connected to particular risks or dangers'
(1991: 41). The value of this argument for us is twofold. First, anxiety is not
a product of the social but a psychic phenomenon which will affect the way
that actual rosk is experienced, and thus the way that positions within
fear/risk discourses, such as fear of crime, get reproduced. Second, cir-
cumstances of individual history as well as contemporary social position in
relation to risk and crime will variably affect people's fear of crime.
In all four of the above acecunts - Beck, Douglas, Bauman and GiddeIls
- a subject is inferred who apprehends and makes sense of the risks char-
acterizing late modern society, but this subject is not developed (except par-
tially in Giddens). In each case, the desire for certainty, or the wish to avoid
uncertainty, is a central feature of this late-modern subject, stemming from
late modernity's 'globalization of doubt' (Beck 1992: 21). In Beck, conse-
quences for the subject stem primarily from the unknowability of the
hazard, which makes control impossible and means that 'hazards can be
projected onto all the objects of daily life' (op. cit.: 54). In other words,
because we have no means of being sure where risk and safety lie, nothing
can be trusted and anxiety, therefore, potentially finds a location in any
area of daily life. In Douglas' account, the desire for certainty translates into
the 'moral concern' of sreal blaming'; 'the belief that any misfortune must
have a cause; a perpetrator to blame, from whom to extract compensation'
(1994: 16). Thus 'real blarning' can be seen as a defence against uncer-
tainty, produced and reproduced at the cultural level. Likewise in Bauman,
the denial of ambivalence functions as a defence against uncertainty. In
Giddens, trust and anxiety are central explanatory concepts. In each case,
concepts are brought into play which require a psychodynamic theory for
their elaboration: projection (of fear), defence against uncertainty, denial
of ambivalence, trust and anxiety. All of these concepts, which cohere

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262 Wendy Hollway and Tony Jefferson

around anxiety and defences against anxiety, have been elaborated within
psychoanalytic theory.

THE ANXIOUS SUBJECT IN FEAR OF CRIME

The introduction of psychological-level concepts which contradict the

assumption of a rational calculating subject is evident in each of the major
social theories of risk which we have introduced, but they are only devel-
oped in Giddens' work. The need for such a conceptualization is also
apparent from empirical and feminist work. An example of the former is
Nicholson's interview st.udy of burglary victims ( 1994), whose theme was the
seriousness of the trauma suffered as a result of house break-ins which,
although they resulted in stolen property, had not involved any physical
threats. In the case of feminist work on violence against women, including
rape, there is an insistence on traumatic effects which operate at a deep
level and persist over time (Roberts 1989). Again, these subjects, trauma-
tized victims of crime, are rarely theorized, and then inadequately.
The psychoanalytic concept of anxiety has the virtue of being part of a
sophisticated and coherent body of theory which is based on a subject
whose primary source of meaning and action is the dynamic unconscious,
rather than cogniiive reason. The desire for certainty and the related
fantasy of controlling external forces are derived from psychic sources to
do with the universal condition of anxiety? which none the less manifests
differently in particular historical periods and places (Brennan 1993). The
creative and imaginative forms which defences against anxiety take can
explain the fact that the subject is not simply a product of the social environ-
ment. Whatever is repressed because it is threatening to the integrity of the
self (thereby provoking anxiety) does not disappear but manifests in indi-
rect ways; for example through displacement onto another arena in a
person's life or indeed onto another person or idea or group. We are
arguing that to understand the growth and impact of a fear of crime dis-
course, given the many other competing fear/risk discourses currently
available, we must theorize the passage of this discourse through individual
psyches - the reasons for its take-up by at least many individuals - which has
enabled it to be reproduced in the way we have seen in the culturall politi-
cal and organizational spheres.
The following case examples are based on data drawn from an early stage
of our fieldwork interviewing. We use material from two contrasting inter-
viewees to provide an illustration of how subjects are variably invested in a
fear of crime discourse.
Bob is a middle-aged man who lost his job, partly as a result of an indus-
trial accident which has left him in pain and contributed to his general ill-
health. His wife is also unemployed and they have lived for six years in a
council house, with their nine-yeareld son, on a high-crime estate on the
outskirts of North city. Within the last year they have had their one and only

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 The ruk society in an age of anxiety 263

burglary, occurring when they had gone out shopping, in which a TV, video
and three tapes were stolen. Their neighbour saw local boys running away
from the house. They are still preoccupied with this break-in, to the extent
that they mostly arrange their daily life so that one of them is always at
home. They don't go away and rarely go out together because the worry
spoils their excursion (they can't afford it either). They have intentionally
replaced their TV and video with such old and cheap models that they
would not be worth stealing. Bob sleeps poorly and at the slightest sound
is up to make a tour of the windows to check for intruders. He lies awake
thinking about which tactics he would use to overpower intruders (he is
army trained and claims to have no fear for his own physical safety).
Most external commentators, slipping into the language of risk analysis,
would conclude that the fear of crime which appears to be governing the
life of this family is out of proportion to the risk. If risk is made up of 'not
only the probability of an event but the magnitude of its outcome' (Douglas
1994: 31), there would seem to be little at stake: nothing valuable in the
house, no history of violent burglary on the estate. Why then are Bob and
his wife preoccupied with another burglary? The social constructionist, or
discourse determinist, answer would be drawn to the fact that Bob can
recite a catalogue of burglaries on households in the nearby streets, which
feed into the reproduction of the fear of crime discourse on this estate. We
wish rather to ask: 'why is fear of crime so dominant as a discourse and how
does this get reproduced through the meanings that Bob (and many but
not all others) make of their lives?
Fear of crime (in this case fear of burglary) is an unconscious displace-
ment of other fears which are far more intractable and do not display the
modern characteristics of knowability and decisionability (or actionability)
which add up to the belief in ones capacity to control the external world.
These other fears, in Bob's case, might be f'ear of' physical incapacity and
ageing; fear of the meaninglessness of his current existence; fear of an
unfamiliar and potentially hostile world outside the home. The fear of
crime discourse has certain effects which promote control, in contrast to
uncertainty, thereby paradoxically functioning as a defence against more
threatening anxieties. First, his take up of a position as potential victim in
the fear of crime discourse keeps him at home, which is the place he feels
most safe. Second, it provides a knowable location for his fears: nothing
worse than local kids whom he believes, as in his night-time fantasies, he
can deal with if they do intrude. This provides him with an imaginary sense
of mastery which must be in short supply for an unemployed and ailing man
whose wife has to continuously sit with him in case he has a fit, who has con-
stant headaches, who no longer feels able to do any praciical jobs in the
house or garden. Third, it provides an external rationale for behaviour (like
never going away and rarely going out) which, if it were seen in purely econ-
omic terms might well reflect on him personally as failed breadwinner.
Paradoxically then, a rampant 'fear of crime' discourse which might on
the face of it be thought to exacerbate fears, could actually serve

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 Wendy Hollway and T

264

uncon
otherwise would be too threatening to cope with. In a late-modern world
of uncertainty, ambivalence, chaos even; of risks that are omnipresent but
invisible, fear of crime might provide some rather modern reassurances: the
knowability of the criminal (local kids); the decisionability of response
(don't leave the house empty); the mastery or control of anxiety (I can phys-
ically overpower the intruder); the externality of the source of misfortune
and the consequent opportunity for sreal blaming' (the 'other', not myself,
is responsible for my predicament).
A second respondent, Joe, demonstrates a different positioning within
the fear of crime discourse. Also middle-aged and unemployed, he has
worked only briefly after his seven-year apprenticeship ended in the mid
1970s. Like Bob he has a fund of stories of crime on the estate, much of it
directly witnessed: kids breaking into empty houses; youngsters knocking
up dealers for their 'draws, stolen cars and motorbikes being raced dan-
gerously around the narrow roads. However, the worst that has happened
to him is a stolen puppy. Despite the omnipresent criminal activity, he
doesn't expect personally to become a victim, nor is he afraid to walk the
estate at any time of the day or night - beliefs that do not prevent him taking
a range cf precautions like garaging his car off the estate and installing
security lights.4
Like Bob he thinks the estate is 'terrible' and getting worse, but, unlike
Bob, he would never move. Coming from a large farnily, havlng lived there
from early childhood, knowing and being known by almost 'everybody',
being active in the comnlunity as boys' soccer coach and Working Men's
Club secretary, this estate is where he belongs, and where he has 'respect',
a word he uses fondly to remember his dead father's reputation. He loves
the fact that 'all' the local youngsters know him by name - even if he has
to shout them down from the roofs of local empty houses. In so far as he is
concerned about crime, he worries for his children: that the youngest might
get knocked down by a stolen car; that the older teenage stepson might be
the driver.
Joe's is then a history of feeling connected; to a large family, many of
whom still live locally; and to a community which has provided the paI
ameter.s of his whole life. He has known little else, neither in the worlds of
work, family nor leisure, and appears to want for little else. One of his
deepest regrets is that his large family does not all get together on ritual
occasions; one of his greatest satisfactions was becoming an 'adoptive'
grandfather for his eldest stepson's first child. This world, in which family
and community play a central role, is essentially a local world, a known
world, and in principle, therefore, a controllable world. His stepson might
be teetering on the brink of crime, the local youngsters might do far worse
things than youngsters dared to do iin his day', but, according to Joe,
measures such as an evening youth club could potentially make the differ-
ence.
Joe's individual biography and his consequent 'emotional inoculation

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The risk society in an age of anxietzy

562
against existential anxieties' does not render him immune to the
take-up and reproduction of a fear of crime discourse (hence his security
measures), but it does mean that fear of crime does not act as a magnet
for other anxieiies. ThusJoe has no need of the unconscious displacement
apparent in Bob's story. Being fit and healthy, being active in the
community, being known and respected: these giveJoe a feeling of being
in control, of having some influence. The fear of crime discourse has
little purchase on his local, estate-based life because it achieves no
additional meaning as a defence against other unnameable fears and anx-
ieties.

CONCLUSION

In this paper we have developed a double critique of existing approaches

to fear of crime. First we argued the need to render the debate more social
by resituating it within larger debates about the nature of late-modern
societies. Second we stressed the importance of a more complex psychic
dimension to 'fearful' subjects than has been provided so far. In rethink-
ing questions of 'fear' and 'risk' against the broader canvas of modernity,
we concluded that fear of crime is a peculiarly apt discourse within the
modernist quest for order since the risks it signifies, unlike other late
modern risks, are knowable, decisionable (actionable), and poteniially control-
lable. In an age of uncertainty, discourses that appear to promise a resolu-
tion to ambivalence by producing identifiable victims and blameable
villains are likely to figure prominently in the State's ceaseless attempts to
impose social order. Thus the figure of the 'criminal' becomes a conveni-
ent folk devil and the fear of crime discourse a satisting location for anxi-
eties generated more widely. However, how particular individuals identify
with fear of crime discourses depends on their unique biographies, especi-
ally their histories of anxiety and how they have come to handle the cir-
cumstances of their lives in the light of these. Thus the impact of fear of
crime discourses, even on high-crime estates where criminal victimization
is commonplace, is a variable affair that does not reduce to social group
membership, incivilities and official risk rates.

(Date accepted: February 1996) Wendy Hollway

Department of Psychology
University of Leeds
and
Tony Jefferson
Department of Criminology
University of Keele

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 Wendy Hollway and Tony Jefferson
266

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NOTES

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* This research was conducted with the
support of the ESRC Crime and Social
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,8

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