http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/00420980120046590

Gender, Race, Age and Fear in the City

This article argues that focus group discussions are shaped by multiple social contexts, a fact that is often ignored by researchers. Using data from a focus group study of the effects of violence on everyday life, this article provides an analysis of four such contexts: the associational, status (especially gender), conversational, and relational contexts. These multiple and overlapping contexts foster both problematic silences (lack of disclosure) and problematic speech (strategic shaping of comments) in group discussions. These processes limit the usefulness of focus groups as a tool for understanding individual thoughts, feelings, or experiences. However, they make focus groups an excellent site for analyzing the processes of social interaction. The article concludes with suggestions for improving the implementation and interpretation of focus groups in light of this analysis.

/pdf/the-social-contexts-of-focus-groups-2tbjs8d1jv.pdf

The Social Contexts of Focus Groups

This article reviews the literature on fear of crime of interest to the geographical and environmental disciplines After discussing definitional and methodological issues, the article focuses on accounts which link fear with the physical environment, and then on fear, social identity and exclusion It considers the significance of one area of recent research that attempts to link place and social relations through developing local ethnographies of fear The review concludes with some suggestions for building upon this work, and highlights the relevance of the geographical themes discussed to current policy debates

http://www1.geo.ntnu.edu.tw/~moise/Data/Books/Social/08%20part%20of%20theory/place,%20social%20relations.pdf

Place, social relations and the fear of crime: a review

Fear of crime and criminal victimization: Gender-based contrasts

In this article, the authors use survey data to explore relationships between gender, fear of crime and socially desirable responding. The data show that for men, but not women, reported fear levels are inversely related to scores on a so-called 'lie scale', which measures the tendency to provide socially desirable rather than totally candid responses. This pattern holds irrespective of age and suggests that the genders are affected differently by social pressure to downplay fears about crime. Statistical analyses suggest that this tendency is likely to be responsible for the observed inclination for males to report lower levels of crime-related anxieties. In fact, males may actually be more afraid of crime than women when this tendency is quantified and corrected for. The results raise concerns about apparent gender differences in fear of crime, and about the use of fear of crime measures more generally. The present findings may also go some way to resolving the victimization-fear and fear-risk paradoxes which for so long have mystified criminologists. The article ends with some recommendations for research into the fear of crime.

Gender, socially desirable responding and the fear of crime: Are women really more anxious about crime?

The gendered stereotypes of’fearless male/fearful female’ are not supported by the reality of complex and multiple identities and the shifting meanings of fear and fearlessness which are brought to and evolve from these identities. Referring to evidence from the author’s own research, childhood and adolescence are put forward as crucial stages in identity development where one can begin to unpack the processes by which gendered meanings of fear and fearlessness become ‘fixed’. This paper argues that the image of the ‘fearless’ male, from childhood onwards, is not a helpful one. The benefits to the male sex from taking on a ‘fearless’ persona, alongside its negative social implications, are discussed with reference to hegemonic masculinity. Class and race are put forward as significant variables in the development of hegemonic masculinity’s emotionally inarticulate persona and racism is highlighted as one of the ugliest expressions of exaggerated masculinity. The above is placed and developed within the theoretical context of the ‘hegemonic masculine biography’

Jo Goodey

Papers

BOYS DON'T CRY Masculinities, Fear of Crime and Fearlessness