Talking about fear of violence in public space: female and male narratives about threatening situations in Umeå, Sweden

Abstract

Geographers may benefit from a narrative approach as it permits insights into both meanings and how stories are permitted and controlled by social conditions. The aim of this article is to discuss methodological aspects of studying fear as a restriction on mobility and use of public space. We have used examples from a study on fear of violence in the city of Umeå , Sweden at the time of threats from a serial rapist, the Haga Man. We employed Labov's model to analyse female and male narratives about fear. Women from all backgrounds reproduced a shared story of experiences of fear. Male stories were fragmented and diverse, especially in terms of ethnicity. The Haga Man was described in the media as a man of 'normal Swedish appearance', which put a focus on Swedish hegemonic masculinity and 'normality' rather than on commonly reproduced fear of the racialized other. Labov's model was useful in clarifying how narratives differed in their structural components and completeness, but limited in terms of how to interpret the evaluative component: the model needs to be combined with theory in order to understand relations to changing political, institutional and media discourses on crime and fear in public space.

Exploring gender and fear retrospectively: stories of women’s fear during the ‘Yorkshire Ripper’ murders

“…A number of writers have explored fear of crime and gender using biography and narrative to account for the contradictory and multi-layered nature of fearful subjectivity (Sandberg and Tollefsen, 2010;Hollway and Jefferson, 2000;Jefferson and Hollway, 1997).…”

“…The findings confirm intensified fears, whilst also revealing powerful accounts of resistance and the disavowal of fear derived from class, place and specific biographies of fear and violence. The article concludes by arguing that biographical and narrative approaches help draw out the ambiguity and complexity of fearfulness (Hollway and Jefferson, 2000;Ranasinghe, 2013;Sandberg and Tollefsen, 2010) which both challenge and reaffirm feminist perspectives on violence and fear.…”

Evaluación de impacto del programa “Viajemos Seguras en el Transporte Público en la Ciudad de México”: Aportes al diseño e implementación de políticas de prevención de la violencia de género en espacios públicos

“…Hay evidencia consistente con respecto a que el género es uno de los principales predictores del temor (Dammert, 2007), grupos como las mujeres y de la tercera edad experimentan mayor temor a la delincuencia a pesar de tener niveles más bajos de victimización que los hombres y los jóvenes (Sandberg y Tollefsen, 2010). Esta paradoja ha sido explicada a través de tres marcos explicativos que ayudan a responder por qué las mujeres presentan mayores niveles de inseguridad o temor, sin embargo menores tasas de victimización; a diferencia de los hombres, lo que supone una clara diferenciación de modelos:…”

Migration, vulnerability and the complexity of violence: Experiences of documented non-EU migrants in Slovakia

“…While these aspects have been well recognised in debates concerning gender (Pain, 1997;Koskela 1997;Mehta and Bondi, 1999;Brownlow, 2005), age (Pain, 2006;Bromley and Stacey, 2012) or ethnicity (Pain, 2001;Ehrkamp, 2008;Sandberg and Tollefsen, 2010), migration history and a different place of origin also needs to be considered as relevant factors of social difference triggering such constellation. Mehta and Bondi (1999, 67) show how the "management" of danger needs to be understood "in terms of the discursive production and reproduction of gendered identities" and the same should be considered regarding the experiences of migrants.…”