Sonic landscapes of fear and anxiety in inner-Sydney

• In Event: Situational Fear and Risk in Place and Time

Abstract

In this paper, we examine the acoustic soundscapes of places associated with negative perceptions of crime, building on the understanding of fear of crime as an affective and eerie entity (Simpson et al., 2024). This fear is a pre-reflexive and emotive response linked to spatiality, anxiety, and disturbance.

The literature on fear of crime acknowledges the spatial nature of our anxieties and responses to feelings of fear and safety (e.g., Chataway, 2020). These feelings are unevenly distributed across urban, suburban, rural, and remote places, as well as public, semi-public, and private spaces (Krannich et al., 1989). Pain (1997) notes that fear of crime is closely linked to specific environments, especially those perceived as dark, lonely, unattractive, or uncared-for. Chataway (2020) and Lee (2007) also highlight how feelings of safety are shaped by physical, social, and environmental features, including familiarity with the place and its occupants.

While fear of crime is influenced by geographic and temporal dimensions, objective measures do not account for broader expressive fears (Jackson et al., 2009). Certain places almost breathe a sense of anxiety, creating an ‘atmosphere’ (Bissell, 2010; Young, 2019) enveloped in a chilling presence of fear. Drawing on Fisher’s (2016) concept of the eerie, this paper explores the sonic ‘atmospheres’ that give a place its spatial ‘character’; a felt interplay between spatiality and the assembly of bodies, emotion, discourse, materiality, and technology.

Atmospheres, as an ‘energy of feeling,’ may arise or dissipate depending on environmental immersion. They are central to everyday conduct, influencing and restricting practices, and reproducing structures of gender, emotion, and feeling. Through field recordings in inner-Sydney suburbs and in-depth interviews following fear of crime surveys, this paper presents an innovative methodology to frame new questions around space, belonging, and the atmospheric generation of fear.

Authors

• Murray Lee, University of Sydney

• Carolyn McKay, University of Sydney

• Alex Simpson, Macquarie University