The trouble with safety: Fear of crime, pollution and subjectification in public space
This article examines how fear of crime and safekeeping are constituted as part of the same dispositif of control which subjectifies (produces a specific form of self) and which perpetrates spatial and social injustice. Problematizing how imperatives for safekeeping are constituted, this article outlines the role of the abject and anxiety about pollution and disorder in the production of knowledge about public spaces, of the self, and of the other. I draw on data collected from qualitative interviews with young women aged 17 in the UK about their experiences of fear of crime, safety, belonging, exclusion and well being in public spaces. By conducting discourse analysis on their talk, this article posits that exclusionary notions of class, race and gender construct part of how some young women produce knowledge about fear of crime and safety. This research has implications for better understanding the social cost of contemporary knowledge about what is safe and what is fearsome in public space.