Fear: Critical Geopolitics and Everyday Life

'Fear' in the twenty-first century has greater currency in western societies than ever before. Through scares about cot death, juvenile crime, internet porn, asylum seekers, dirty bombs and avian flu, we are bombarded with messages about emerging risks. This book takes stock of a range of issues of 'fear' which have come to public and academic attention in recent years, and asks how these relate to a rich body of earlier critical scholarship on fear. The book presents new theoretical arguments and new research findings that cover topics as diverse as the war on terror, the immigration crisis, stranger danger, global disease epidemics and sectarian violence.Previous analysis of fear has taken two largely separate trajectories: fear in everyday life, and political geographies of fear at global and national levels. This book puts forward a conceptual framework which identifies and emphasizes the connections between the two. It charts the association of fear discourses with particular spaces, times, social identities and sets of geopolitical relations. It examines the ways in which fear may be manufactured and manipulated for political purposes, sometimes becoming a tool of repression, and relates fear to political, economic and social marginalisation at different scales. But it also highlights the importance and sometimes unpredictability of everyday lived experiences of fear - the many ways in which people recognise, make sense of and manage fear; the extent of resistance to fear; the relation of fear and hope in everyday life; and the role of emotions in galvanizing political and social action and change.