Locating 'fear of crime' : safety talk in a South Western Sydney context

![CDATA[This paper discusses how residents in a socio-economically disadvantaged community with high recorded crime rates in South-Western Sydney express ‘fear of crime’ discourse. Specifically, it situates or locates ‘fear of crime’ within broader discussions of respondent’s lives in the community. It argues that removing context and narrative from ‘fear of crime’ research, as is generally the case with victim survey type questionnaires, is likely to overstate participants concerns. The article concludes by suggesting that, contrary to much of the accepted wisdom within the ‘fear of crime’ literature, not only did our respondents have a largely ‘realistic’ notion of where risks in their locality might lay, but that they were also able to clearly articulate these in broader socio-spatial contexts. This contextualisation was possible through the use of a research methodology which avoided providing respondents with a ‘fear of crime’ discourse on which to project their no doubt many social anxieties.]]