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Wendy Hollway and TonyJefferson
ABSTRACT
. . . .
INTRODUCTION
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
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The risk society in an age of anxiety 257
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Wendy Hollway and Tony Jefferson
258
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)
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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)
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)
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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).
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The risk society in an age of anxiety
162
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262 Wendy Hollway and Tony Jefferson
around anxiety and defences against anxiety, have been elaborated within
psychoanalytic theory.
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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
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Wendy Hollway and Tony Jefferson
266
BIBLIOGRAPHY
NOTES
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