Search

Abstract: In risk studies, a large scope of approaches has already been defined, from hazard-centered to socially rooted analysis; being social scientists’ focus on vulnerability more obvious from the late 1960s on. The present epistemological article locates risk causes in society and states that the production of risks is two fold: these are both material and discursive. The conceptual proposal of the article consists of setting an integrative framework that accounts for material aspects of risk as well as for the performative dimensions of its discourses, representations and conceptions. By performativity we mean that discourses and representations do not only reflect what people see or have in mind, but that they also operate the world and make things exist, having concrete consequences in society and its relations with the environment. The proposed framework is called the territorialization-of-risk framework and requires contextualizing and politicizing risk. We state that such framework lays epistemological and methodological groundwork for such a perspective. Territories are viewed as social constructions that are more than bounded pieces of space where an authority takes place. They are spaces where competing social meanings and identification are ascribed, and their making accounts for both material and ideal social drivers that also do intervene in the production of risk. Drawing on different Latin-American cities’ case studies, and mainly on the case of Caracas as former PhD fieldwork, the territorialization-of-risk allows asking critical questions related with power relations, social status, identity and discourses. Actually, risk appears to be the result of a social (both material and ideal) production as it contributes to the shaping of society. It is an outcome and a driver of society at the same time. The territorialization-of-risk framework sheds the light on the importance of non-material aspects in framing risk, as well as on the factual and discursive consequences of its management and policy. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Caracas is one of the most dangerous cities in the world, and insecurity is among the core concerns of Venezuelans. Urban insecurity shapes the anxious meta-narrative of an urbanity in crisis. The Caracazo (uprising that caused hundreds of deaths in 1989 in Caracas) defines a critical turn in the experiencing of urban fears, at least among middle-class sectors: the myth of an inclusive-urbanity in a democratic society breaks up when traditionally excluded people burst into the formal city. Former social framing and State–society ties are undermined in a time of crisis. The growing fear of insecurity triggers off socio-spatial transformations which are actually socially and racially driven. This paper aims at politicizing fear of crime and insecurity in Caracas by “situating” it, and by underlying its performativity. As a socially-contingent category, fear can be instrumentalized in different ways. It appears that fear of crime and insecurity contributes to consolidate, more than create, urban territorialities grounded on classism and racism. The hegemonic narrative of fear is powerful – and legitimate – enough not to address root drivers of fragmenting dynamics, as a technology of control. Nevertheless, the unexpected implications that current fear of crime might bring are challenging an unequal socio-spatial order, sign of contested supremacies. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]