The socioecology of fear: A critical geographical consideration of human-wolf-livestock conflict

Animal fear can be an important driver of ecological community structure: predators affect prey not only through predation, but also by inducing changes in behaviour and distribution—a phenomenon evocatively called the “ecology of fear.” The return of wolves to the western United States is a notable instance of such dynamics, yet plays out in a complex socioecological system where efforts to mitigate impacts on livestock rely on manipulating wolves' fear of people. Examining Washington state's efforts to affect wolf behaviour to reduce livestock predation, we argue that this approach to coexistence with wolves is predicated on relations of fear: people, livestock, and wolves can arguably share landscapes with minimal conflict, as long as wolves are adequately afraid. We introduce the “socioecology of fear” as an interdisciplinary framework for examining the interwoven social and ecological processes of human-wildlife conflict management. Beyond frequently voiced ideas about wolves' “innate” fear, we examine how fear is (re)produced through human-wolf interactions and deeply shaped by human social processes. We contribute to the critical physical geography project by integrating critical social analysis with ecological theory, conducted through collaborative interdisciplinary dialogue. Such integrative practice is essential for understanding the complex challenges of managing wildlife in the Anthropocene.     

Fearsome people and places,narratives of street and hideout children in Freetown,Sierra Leone

This article is based on a GOAL Global field study of street children in Freetown, Sierra Leone. It draws on narrative accounts given by street children who have migrated to Freetown from rural Sierra Leone. The study used the participatory ranking method to generate data about children’s street and hideout (a room, shack or part of a building where children live in groups) lives post-migration. These data contained much about children’s fears, and the article explores their experience of fearsome people and places, showing that fear is a dominant aspect of these children’s lives. Fear shapes their day-to-day choices and decisions: their agency. It also suggests that agency should be seen as complex, contingent and sometimes paradoxical. The article concludes by identifying implications for social policy and practice, suggesting that these necessarily entail risky engagement with fearsome people in the liminal spaces of children’s street and hideout lives.     

Gender,Perceptions of Safety and Strategic Responses among Ohio University Students

Research on perceptions of safety in public spaces must seek a balance between paying careful attention to the effects of gender, while challenging simplistic notions of a dichotomy of fearful women and fearless men. In a study of perceptions of safety among undergraduate students at the Ohio State University, this principle was addressed by decentering fear as the object of study and focusing instead on the various strategies that women and men use to manage their perceptions of safety—including avoidance of certain situations (for example, being in specific places, or going outside after dark), precautionary measures, and assertions of confidence. Questionnaire responses and follow-up interviews indicated that most students usually felt safe on campus; however, women were more likely than men to have felt unsafe. Students used a wide range of strategies to make themselves feel safer, from staying home after dark to formulating plans for self-defense to telling themselves they had nothing to fear. While a focus on strategic responses illuminated areas of overlap in men's and women's experiences, gender differences were also striking. Men are unlikely to rely on avoidance strategies, while some women view self-imposed restrictions on activity as normal and necessary. Furthermore, many men are unwilling or unable to relate to questions about fear and safety, explicitly or implicitly reinscribing fear as a ‘women's issue’.     

Bipolar antagonism and multipolar coexistence: framing difference and shaping fear in two Caribbean cities

This article proposes a new approach to urban geographies of fear, focusing on the connection between fear and cultural understandings and representations of difference. Much of the existing work on the relationship between fear, urban space, and social difference tends to take social difference as more or less given. In this article, we argue that how differences (such as ethnic, political or class differences) are framed has strong implications for geographies of fear. The article suggests that dualistic and nondualistic framings of difference influence levels of fear and that this becomes visible in the use and perceptions of urban space, and in the built environment through the erection of physical barriers. These spatial factors, as they limit mobility and interaction, tend to reproduce the specific framing of difference. Two discursive modes of representing difference are discussed. The first, ‘bipolar antagonism’, is based on a dualist rhetoric of irreconcilable opposites. This is contrasted with ‘multipolar co-existence’, in which social categories are understood as multiple or hybrid, with flexible or fluid boundaries, and as not necessarily antagonistic. This argument is elaborated through a comparative analysis of social–cultural and spatial processes in two Caribbean cities: Kingston, Jamaica, and Paramaribo, Suriname.     

Co‐Producing (a Fearful) Anthropocene

The Anthropocene is not amenable to the senses but, like many modern concepts, must be made visible. We explore the ‘Great Acceleration’ imagery as an immutable mobile to explore how this human‐made geological epoch is constituted through the aggregation of disparate elements of extreme complexity. Our analysis explores how disparate issues such as ‘telephone use’ and ‘coastal zone biogeochemistry’ can be associated and enrolled into the same argument. We write as concerned observers, who are concerned with the way that recognition for phenomena is enrolled into a fear‐based narrative. This risks reproducing the governance structures at the heart of the Great Acceleration and, if so, we ask what this might mean. Using fear is a risky strategy that is as likely to lead to relatively poor behaviours as it is to some ‘awakening’. We make this case as a way of contributing to the Anthropocene debate, challenging those promoting the idea to consider the co‐productive relationship between the knowledge they are proposing and the governance that knowledge entails.     

Tropes of fear and the crisis of the west: Trumpism as a discourse of post-territorial coloniality*

We examine ‘Trumpism’ as a contemporary form of colonial domination, showing how this discourse represents both a crisis of coloniality and a stimulus for a movement of ‘decoloniality’. A critical discourse analysis is applied to seven speeches delivered by Donald Trump between his announcement of his presidential candidacy in June 2015 and his inauguration in January 2017. In assessing Trump's arguments, we focus mainly on those concerning national security, illegal immigration, and the threats posed by various foreign countries. Although these arguments sit within a long colonial tradition, they also indicate a crisis of modernity, as witnessed in the growing challenges to colonial masculinity, nationalism, and rationality. We conclude that Trumpism articulates a reaction to these challenges, and that Trump's rise to power is a symptom of the crisis of post-territorial coloniality in contemporary global society.     

Domestic violence,safe space and vicarious abuse: inside a Pennsylvania Exchange and Visitation Center

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork that I conducted in the ‘safe space’ of an exchange and visitation center, this article examines center staffs’ experiences of vicarious abuse. Vicarious abuse refers to the emotional effects that occur when someone – other than the victim in the relationship – experiences or witnesses the coercively controlling tactics of a domestic violence abuser. This article examines the limitations of safe space that fails to consider the physical and emotional security needs of all who utilize the space. By tracing the fears of staff who interact with abusers, this article also frames domestic violence as a public safety concern with implications beyond the intimate. With recognition that staff experiences of vicarious abuse differ from the embodied experiences of victims in abusive relationships, this article applies a feminist geographic analytic to examine how the ‘safe space’ of an exchange and visitation center enables fear and normalizes vicarious abuse.     

Historical ecology of late Holocene sea otters (Enhydra lutris) from northern British Columbia: isotopic and zooarchaeological perspectives

We examined the isotopic composition (δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N) of sea otter (Enhydra lutris) bone collagen from ten late Holocene (ca. 5200 years BP–AD 1900) archaeological sites in northern British Columbia (BC), Canada. Because sea otters are now extinct from much of this region and have not fully recolonized their former range (e.g. Haida Gwaii and most of northern BC) these data represent an important first step towards better understanding sea otter foraging ecology in BC. The isotopic data suggest a diet composed primarily of benthic invertebrates, with a very low reliance on epibenthic fish. There is very low isotopic and thus inter-individual dietary variability in Holocene BC sea otters during the late Holocene. Furthermore, zooarchaeological abundance data suggest that otters represented a widespread and significant focus of aboriginal hunting practices on the northern BC coast during the mid- to late-Holocene. The consistent reliance on a small number of low-trophic level prey and limited dietary variability in Holocene BC sea otters may reflect top-down impacts on otter populations by aboriginal peoples. As part of our assessment of sea otter diet, we review trophic discrimination factors (Δ¹³C and Δ¹⁵N) for bone collagen from published literature and find marked variability, with mean values of +3.7 ± 1.6 for Δ¹³C (n = 21) and +3.6 ± 1.3 for Δ¹⁵N (n = 15).     

Communitas in fright tourism

Abstract

Liminality offers an explanation of the threshold one passes through as they enter a tourist destination. Beginning with the anticipation phase of the experience a tourist travels to a destination for an on-site experience. Multiple thresholds occur for the tourist, yet during the periods prior to the actual event, motivations will likely draw or repel the individual. For dark tourism research none have reviewed these liminal experiences in fright tourism, the more entertaining and lighter aspect of the dark elder. To better understand the anticipation stage of the liminal experience, the influence of fear while entering a haunted attraction is explored. Fear is expected to contribute to the fun of these haunted attractions. During this liminal phase, communitas evolve where the social bonding of the visitors develops during the encounter. Characteristics of these groups are examined in this exploratory study.     

The public playground paradox: ‘child’s joy’ or heterotopia of fear?

ABSTRACT

Literature depicts children of the Global North withdrawing from public space to ‘acceptable islands’. Driven by fears both of and for children, the public playground – one such island – provides clear-cut distinctions between childhood and adulthood. Extending this argument, this paper takes the original approach of theoretically framing the playground as a heterotopia of deviance, examining – for the first time – three Greek public playground sites in relation to adjacent public space. Drawing on an ethnographic study in Athens, findings show fear to underpin surveillance, control and playground boundary porosity. Normative classification as ‘children’s space’ discourages adult engagement. However, in a novel and significant finding, a paradoxical phenomenon sees the playground’s presence simultaneously legitimizing playful behaviour in adjacent public space for children and adults. Extended playground play creates alternate orderings and negotiates norms and hierarchies, suggesting significant wider potential to reconceptualise playground-urban design for an intergenerational public realm.