Fear and security have become increasingly determining factors in urban planning and policies, having ambiguous effects on public space as a central element of democracy (Davis 1992), as well as on public/private relations as a politically charged geographical organiser of gendered-social relations (Koskela and Pain 2000). Therefore, understanding and (re)addressing the security and fear in the context of urban public space is important not only to have a city where one could feel safe and free but potentially to have a city that is equally safe and free for all. My research focuses on the ways in which fear and women’s bodies, have been instrumentalised in political rhetoric shaping public spaces, in a time, when both market forces are increasingly determining (further criminalising the poor), and governments are taking authoritarian turns (spreading xenophobia). I believe that a multiscalar/trans-scalar (Pain 2009, Tulumello 2020) analysis of the production of fear can contribute to a critical understanding of such processes and able to establish a grounded critique of the militarization of urban space and urban policy-making defined by fear often based on Othering. I approach my research through a feminist political economy lens and by the analysis of political rhetoric across selected government-related media outlets in Hungary (e.g., local newspapers, campaigns, billboards), using computer software for qualitative coding and content analysis as research methods. I also draw on survey/ ReliefMap results (Rodó-de-Zárate 2014) focusing on emotions – fear in particular – in the context of three central squares of Budapest and the home to better understand how fear produced and operate at different scales.
Mots clés : scale|Othering|public space|militarization|political rhetoric
A105179MS