Seismologies of emotion

Fear and Activism During Domestic Violence

Bibliographic Data

ID3977638
AuthorsRachel Pain (0000-0002-0411-0528, Centre for Social Justice, corresponding author)
Year2014
Volume15
Issue2
Pages127-150
Publication date2014-02-17
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueSocial & Cultural Geography (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1464-9365 • E-ISSN: 1470-1197
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/14649365.2013.862846
OpenAlexW2014403052
LanguageEN
Citations received51
References cited48

This paper explores the relation of fear to activism in private and constrained circumstances of chronic risk and anxiety. Asking how people contest domestic violence, given the intensity of the fear that it generates, the paper reframes their responses as practices of activism. It draws on qualitative research that charts the nature, experience and effects of fear over time. Using seismology as a metaphor for this process, the analysis describes complex and often hidden shifts in emotions over periods of years, as interviewees describe being simultaneously constrained by fear and actively using fear to manage and contest violence. Their practices of resistance are small scale, largely invisible to others, and have a messy and non-linear relationship with the process of leaving that some eventually undertake. Such action is only necessary in a social and political climate which continues to place more emphasis on individual than social responsibility for domestic violence. I examine what this resistance adds to recent accounts of activism, concluding that isolated actions constitute activism when they anticipate or engender collective social and political change at other scales

CONTEST · Gender, Security, and Conflict · Migration, Refugees, and Integration · Youth Education and Societal Dynamics

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