Abstract

Through ethnographic encounters and interviews in English middle-class neighbourhoods and institutions, such as schools or the police, Katharina Eisch-Angus traces the concepts of ‘safety’ and ‘security’ concentrating particularly on their associations with the idea and practice of ‘community’ and the ways in which they are disseminated within everyday realities. Emerging systems of governmental control gain an irrefutable persuasiveness by coupling the necessity of safeguarding private spheres with public security demands and by referring to a mentality of personal civic responsibility and charity. In everyday narratives and on-going public debates – from issues of health and safety, or neighbourhood crime, to the threat of paedophiles – suggestive fear and everyday experience, reason and absurdity interlock, whilst also opening up space for resistance and alternative decisions.