Fear of crime and affective ambiguities in the night-time economy

Abstract

This article analyses fear of crime in the night-time economy as an event that emerges from, and unfolds as part of, the on-going encounters with human and non-human elements in particular places. A conceptual approach to understanding fear of crime is elaborated that highlights the role of ambiguity, meaning that a particular element does not have stable, well-determined effects on fear of crime, and the importance of thinking of fear as the folding of immediate futures and the past into the experienced present. Drawing on empirical research with university students in Utrecht, the Netherlands, the article explores how lighting, policing and the presence of 'undesired others' affect fear. Multiple forms of ambiguity are shown to exist, suggesting that interventions in the built environment and zero-tolerance policing tactics are unlikely to reduce fear of crime in the night-time economy as much as past research, influential policy and media discourses have suggested.

The body politics of the urban age: reflections on surveillance and affect

“…Van Rythoven (2015), for example, attempts to marry affect theory with securitization, and argues that relational affects facilitates securitizing moves. In urban studies, researchers have analyzed the precariousness of security and surveillance, from a gender perspective (Koskela, 2002), fear of crime more generally (Brands et al, 2015;Brands and Schwanen, 2014;Shaw, 2014), and in public transport (Bissell, 2010). Ellis et al (2013), for example, develop the concept "affective atmosphere" in a study on British citizens' understanding of CCTV surveillance.…”

Young people: being apart, together in an urban park

“…Koch and Latham 2012). Whilst stimulated for economic reasons, public spaces are kept under increasingly tight control and surveillance in an attempt to mitigate real and imagined excesses (Brands, Schwanen, and van Aalst. 2015).…”

A thousand CEOs

“…Recently, for instance, Deleuze has formed the theoretical cornerstone for critiques of gender (Hickey-Moody and Laurie, 2015), race (Saldanha, 2012a;Saldanha and Adams, 2012), pedagogy (Kullman, 2015), queer space (Talburt and Matus, 2014), environmental conservation (Horowitz, 2016), aesthetics (Saldanha, 2012b), and narrative (Dittmer and Latham, 2015). Deleuze's philosophy has also been important in studies on affect and nonrepresentational theory (Bissell, 2015;Miller, 2014a;Miller, 2014b), as well as those on power (Ruddick, 2012), topology (Dixon and Jones, 2015), the body (Brands et al, 2015;Moreno and Curti, 2012;Tamboukou, 2012), the urban (Robinson, 2016), geopolitics (Dittmer, 2014), cartography (Gerlach, 2014;Farías, 2011), performativity and habit (Atkinson and Scott, 2015;Dewsbury, 2015Dewsbury, , 2011, and landscape and territoriality (Bear, 2013;Huijbens and Benediktsson, 2013).…”