Fear of crime, place and the moral order: A secondary analysis of gated communities

Abstract

This study will use secondary data analysis of academic articles to study the topic under question. Much has been written on fear of crime from a quantitative and to a lesser extent qualitative approach (Burgess and Doran 2012) but little attention has been on this fear as an emotion from an interpretive sociological approach. The approach to emotions employed in this study will draw on Hochschild’s (1983) notion that emotions have signal functions and that emotions constitute a sense just like hearing and seeing, and in her estimation the most important one. Briefly stated, fear (of crime) signals to the person experiencing the emotion that something is worth being wary of; this in turn is based on expectations –and assumptions– of what a safe and orderly situation/environment or person is.