ABSTRACT
In his recent book on risk, D. Gardner describes the effects of the 1930s depression in the USA and the palpable fear in a society that seemed to have lost its way, where “fear had settled like a thick, grey fog across Washington”. At the time, America was in a deep recession with millions of its citizens unemployed, impoverished. and fighting for survival. In such conditions, fear would be both understandable and expected. Politicians regularly invoke the spectre of fear in relation to national security, terrorism, stolen identities, unguarded borders, predatory criminals, illegal immigrants, drug addiction, and more, and “the politics of fear” is a commonplace term. Uncertainty, insecurity, and the fear arising from these have long been themes in the work of Zygmunt Bauman and in his thoughts on the “liquid” quality of modernity. There are many reasons why respondents might feel fear, particularly in the kind of interviews we conducted for the ESRC project.
