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The Anthropology of Fear. Cultures beyond Emotions.

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Contents

Contributors...................................................................................................... 7
Introduction. Risks and Fears from an Anthropological Viewpoint................. 9
Andrea Boscoboinik
Culture and Politics of Fear and Violence in South Africa ............................ 27
Hana Horáková
Fear as a Boundary-Making Strategy: Fixing Ethnocultural Identities by Tatar
Youth in Postsocialist Tatarstan, Russia......................................................... 51
Andrea Friedli
‘If You Eat Dogs, You’ll Eat People’. Otherising on a Greek Island in
Economic Crisis.............................................................................................. 69
Orit Hirsch
‘This Village is Going to Become a Gypsy Village’: Micro-ethnography of
Fear Constructions in Two Romanian Postsocialist Villages......................... 85
Raluca Mateoc
Fears and Rituals in Contemporary Northern Peruvian Andes..................... 101
Juan Javier Rivera Andía
Migration Fears and Anxieties: Kabyle Migrants between Algeria, France and
the Czech Republic....................................................................................... 123
Tereza Hyánková
Grand Master Returns Home: Neutralising Fear in the Process of Creating the
Post-migrant Identity of Contemporary Warmia-Masuria ........................... 143
Michał Maleszka
Political Transition, Uncertainty and Fear: Narratives of Yugoslav Refugees
from the North-Western Borderlands, 1945-1965........................................ 163
Stéphanie Rolland-Traina
Social Memory and Expression of Fear in the Current Modernity .............. 187
Carole Lemee
When the Ethnographer Encounters War ..................................................... 205
Marcello Mollica
Epilogue. The Contextual Rationality of Fear and the Risk of Emotional
Reductionism ................................................................................................ 219
Christian Giordano
References .................................................................................................... 229
Contributors

Andrea Boscoboinik is Senior Lecturer of Social Anthropology at the Univer-

sity of Fribourg, Switzerland.
Andrea Friedli is Lecturer of Social Anthropology at the University of Fri-
bourg, Switzerland.
Christian Giordano is Full Professor of Social Anthropology at the University
of Fribourg, Switzerland and Dr. honoris causa from the University of Timi-
şoara, Romania.
Orit Hirsch is Ph.D. Candidate of Social Anthropology at Ben-Gurion Univer-
sity of the Negev, Israel.
Hana Horáková is Associate Professor of Social Anthropology at Metropoli-
tan University Prague, Czech Republic.
Tereza Hyánková is Assistant Professor of Social Anthropology at the Uni-
versity of Pardubice, Czech Republic.
Carole Lemee is Senior Lecturer of Social Anthropology at the University of
Bordeaux, France.
Michał Maleszka is Ph. D. Candidate at the Institute of Ethnology and Cul-
tural Anthropology at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland.
Raluca Mateoc is Ph.D. Candidate of Social Anthropology at the University
of Fribourg, Switzerland.
Marcello Mollica is Senior Lecturer of Cultural Anthropology at the Univer-
sity of Pisa, Italy.
Juan Javier Rivera Andía is post-doctoral researcher at the University of
Bonn, Germany.
Stéphanie Rolland-Traina is Assistant Professor of Social Anthropology at the
University of Bordeaux, France.
Introduction

Risks and Fears from an Anthropological Viewpoint

Andrea Boscoboinik

Fear is a personal emotion, but is also a social experience resulting from so-
ciocultural constructions. Given its individual as well as collective character,
in addition to its physiological element, fear can be analysed from several
perspectives. Emotions are a truly interdisciplinary subject that may be exam-
ined via a range of tools suited to the study’s focus: the individual, the group,
the society, biological aspects, legal or policymaking implications, the histori-
cal dimension and artistic manifestations among others. Hence, scholars from
different disciplines of natural, social and cultural sciences study fear. The
chapters gathered in volumes such as Fear: across the disciplines (Plamper
and Lazier 2012) and La peur et ses miroirs (Viegnes 2009) written by schol-
ars of neuroscience, biology, philosophy, clinical psychology, political theory,
anthropology, history, literary and film studies, are just some examples of
how fear is variously constituted as an object of scientific inquiry. Further
multidisciplinary projects include Dealing with Fear, undertaken by the
Akademie Schloss Solitude between 2007 and 2009 (2010), or Facing fear:
the history of an emotion in global perspective (Laffan and Weiss 2012). The
exploration of fear is not a novelty. As Lutz and White (1986) already noted
in 1986, since 1970 interest in ‘the emotional’ has burgeoned not only in an-
thropology, but also in psychology, sociology, philosophy, history and femi-
nist studies.
Due to its numerous dimensions and manifestations, it is not easy to set up
the boundaries of the concept of fear, as Edgar Morin recalls (1993: 131).
They lie between worry and dread, between terror and panic. Fear can be
individual or collective, spontaneous or thought-out, permanent or cyclic and
undoubtedly features in disparate setups or circumstances. For Morin, it is a
typically vague concept, but this vagueness or elusiveness is not necessarily a
10 Andrea Boscoboinik

negative fact, since it allows multiple explorations from diverse points of

view.
Fear is an unpleasant emotion caused by the threat of danger, pain or harm.
However, as far as anthropology is concerned, fear cannot be reduced to an
individual emotional condition. Surely, emotions are part of the individual.
Yet, as Scruton states, emotions are cultural creations, not individual ones. In
order to ‘understand not what the emotions are, for this mires us in a bog of
epistemological search for essences and natures, but what the emotions do, we
are compelled to turn away from the individual locus of emotion-experience
to the community’ (1986: 6). Therefore, he concludes that if emotions are
experienced by individuals, their meaning can be found only in our collective
existence (Scruton 1986). In line with this assumption, the chapters gathered
in this book offer different illustrations of how cultures and historic develop-
ment engender and shape fears.
From an anthropological point of view, though a feeling may be shared, it
is not easily approachable via ethnographic methods. Despite the difficulty of
‘formulating an ethnography of fear’ (see Jeudy-Ballini and Voisenat 2004),
one can still grasp the major concerns of a society and a culture through the
sociocultural demonstrations of its collective fears. For this reason, anthropo-
logical interest lies in the origins of fear, in the situations that generate fear at
a given time in a given place. Everyone must learn to live with uncertainty
and control his or her fears. An anthropological approach would lead research
and observations towards what individuals and groups fear the most, why and
which strategies and mechanisms are used to allay, face, cope with and over-
come fear. Consequently, what people fear and how they face fears can teach
anthropologists a great deal about a given society.

Risk and Fear as Cultural Constructions

Fear is understood as a universal human feeling linked to an idea of possibly
being at risk. The notion of fear is so embedded in a host of related concepts,
such as threat, danger, vulnerability, risk as well as violence, that it is difficult
to consider each one separately: when speaking of one, one can hardly avoid
mentioning the others. A risk represents the possibility of trouble or injury, of
something unpleasant or unwelcome that may happen; it implies a situation
involving exposure to danger. Fear and anxiety arise because of perceived
Risks and Fears from an Anthropological Viewpoint 11

risks. However, we are not all afraid of the same things since the notion of
what constitutes a risk is not universal. The notion of risk involves mental
representations about what may occur and the fear of something that might
happen. It is one’s idea of what is a risk that generates fear. Our personal
experiences shape the imagination and our fears. Yet, many of our fears are
not always based on personal experience, but rather on what we think about
risks. And what we think about risks is mediated through cultural values and
social belonging.
The anthropological approach of risk owes much to the work of Mary
Douglas, and also to the discussions and debates it sparked off. The idea that
risks are perceived and defined differently by persons belonging to diverse
cultural contexts was introduced in particular in her book Risk and Culture
written with Aaron Wildavsky (1982). In this and in subsequent publications
(Douglas 1986, 1992), the concept of risk is developed in relation to culture.
This is why it should be considered plural, i.e. concepts of risk. For Douglas
the concepts of risk are inevitably expressed through cultural conventions.
The definition of what constitutes a hazard or a risk changes over time and
cultures. Since fear, threat and danger are shaped by a particular notion of
what constitutes a risk, what we are afraid of changes as well. Another central
theory of sociological risk that was predominant in the early 1990s is Ulrich
Beck’s Risk Society approach (1986, 1992). Beck has consistently argued
that the notion of risk is becoming increasingly central to our global society.
Mary Douglas was the first to explore risk as a social or cultural construc-
tion and the perception of risk as a social process. For this author, risk ‘is not
a thing, it is a way of thinking’ (Douglas 1992: 46). Other authors follow this
idea that there is no such thing as risk in reality and define risk as a way, or a
set of ways, of ordering reality (Dean 1999: 131). Douglas herself later sug-
gested (1997) that the phrase ‘social construction of risk’ has been a source of
confusion because it is interpreted as a denial of the reality of risks. However,
stating that risks are socially constructed does not imply that the risks do not
exist. Risks do exist, but their perception is socially constructed and a person
will react to this constructed perception of risk. This means that a more or less
diffuse emotion of fear will arise from a certain perception and awareness of
the risks involved. Therefore, the social construction of fear is associated to a
social construction of risk, since fears and risks are not rooted in objectivity,
12 Andrea Boscoboinik

but rather are defined and experienced in different ways depending on each
culture and each period. The social and cultural construction of risk also im-
plies that the ways and strategies used by individuals and groups to face it
differ in accordance with specific social, cultural, economic and political fac-
tors.
As Furedi notes, every culture has something distinctive to say about fear.
‘In ancient societies, people were taught to fear their gods or ancestors. In
medieval times, communities were incited to fear witches and other malevo-
lent supernatural forces. Some cultures fear death, others are concerned about
employment’ (Furedi 2007: ix). We are afraid of certain things that others do
not fear. The fact that every period and every culture has major concerns upon
which fear is built, is evidence of the historical aspect of fear: plague at one
time, AIDS at another, the atom bomb, the consequences of climate change
for our survival, unemployment, natural catastrophes, the State etc. Faith in
the future and in progress, which motivated people after World War II, has
been replaced by a widespread fear of the future. ‘It is not hope but fear that
excites and shapes the cultural imagination of the early twenty-first century’
(Furedi 2007: vii). Some contemporary events trigger fears, such as the debt
crisis in Europe, the threat of economic recession or the risk of another world
war. However, fear discourses are selectively perceived by different groups in
distinct societies. The differentiated impact of this ‘culture of fear’ on socie-
ties is a topic that social anthropologists should study.
Accordingly, what is considered a risk at one time and one place for one
group is not necessarily so at another time for another group. This variability
in space and time underscores the above-mentioned socially-constructed na-
ture of risk. The range of risks taken into consideration reflects a group’s
beliefs in terms of values, social institutions, nature and moral behaviour.
Risks are overplayed or underplayed in accordance with social, cultural and
even economic criteria. Some objects, elements or phenomena considered
harmless at one time, may be utterly demonised at another. The well-known
hazards of smoking were not taken into account in the past as they are today.
But even if cigarettes are banned from public places, people keep on smoking.
Nuclear energy is welcome in times of oil crisis and harshly criticised after a
disaster like Fukushima in 2011. The earthquake that devastated the nuclear
power plant Fukushima Daiichi immediately triggered fears of subsequent
Risks and Fears from an Anthropological Viewpoint 13

nuclear disasters elsewhere. Three years later, this issue has subsided and
fears are now directed towards social unrest and global conflicts.
The contemporary trend in risk involves proliferation, multiplication, and
above all, anxiety. According to Furedi (2007), nowadays the objects of our
anxieties are no longer crime, disease, violence and other social problems, but
a general feeling of ‘being at risk’. However, as competent reflective agents,
individuals and groups are aware of this generalised ‘climate of risk’ and are
able to find ways to react to it, be it through active engagement, resigned ac-
ceptance or confused denial. Cultural values, identities, rational choice or
trust, depending on which theoretical frame is adopted, would determine what
significance individuals or groups attach to the different risks and subsequent
fears. According to the cultural theory, culture will condition the impact of
social influences on risk perceptions. Cultural theory is an important frame-
work for understanding how groups in society interpret danger and build trust
or distrust in institutions that create and regulate risk. In the discourses on risk
in different disciplines, trust is always an important issue. Most individuals
are not in a position to determine which claims about risk they ought to heed.
Risk evaluation depends on highly technical forms of scientific information –
epidemiological, toxicological, economic, and the like – to which most people
do not even have access, much less the ability to grasp. Thus, they must trust,
or decide not to trust, competing sources of risk information.
The point of cultural theory is that judgements about danger and threat are
not independent of social context. Individuals adopt stances toward risk that
express their commitment to particular ways of life (Kahan et al 2006: 1088).
Accordingly, each group chooses which type of risk to focus on and which to
omit. Each group has its own array of risks to take into account. This is why
the definition of risk is extremely variable and inherent to specific groups and
ways of life. Therefore, individual perceptions of risks and the ensuing fears
must not be studied as if they were distinct from the social world. Individual
risk perception and the sense of fear are strongly influenced by socially em-
bedded beliefs and values. The system of values makes individuals focus on
certain risks or, on the contrary, disregard them.
Current social anthropology interest, therefore, should focus on how social
groups deal and cope with the current climate of risks and fears, or in brief,
which strategies need to be adopted to survive; if all the risks and fears were
14 Andrea Boscoboinik

authentic, everyday life would be unbearable. One of the roles of anthropol-

ogy is precisely to challenge the view perpetuated by political philosophy,
sociology, international relations studies and other disciplines supporting the
notion that the world is unambiguously swayed by fears.1

Coping with Fear

A renewed attention towards the link between emotion and power, in terms of
what to fear and who decides, brings us to classic studies about politics and
fear. Corey Robin (2004) recalls that classic authors such as Machiavelli,
Hobbes, Montesquieu and Tocqueville have dealt with this emotion. In The
Prince Machiavelli sets forth several guidelines and a behaviour code for a
ruler. By writing in chapter 17 that it ‘is much safer to be feared than loved’,
he establishes that fear is a means to an end and that end is to maintain power
and respect. Throughout Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan there are several refer-
ences to fear and its effects as one of the defining principles of human interac-
tion. For Hobbes, in order to achieve political calm humans replace fear of
each other with fear of the State. Thus, kindling and managing fear is viewed
as the highest exercise of sovereign political power. Corey Robin, who analy-
ses the use of fear as a political weapon, writes that Montesquieu, like
Hobbes, turned to fear as a foundation for politics (Robin 2004: 53). Whereas
Hobbesian fear was a tool of political order, serving ruler and ruled alike,
Montesquieu believed that terror fulfilled the needs of a ruthless despot. After
Hobbes’ fear and Montesquieu’s terror, Tocqueville focuses on anxiety: ‘Re-
defined as anxiety, fear was no longer thought of as a tool of power; instead, it
was a permanent psychic state of the masses’ (Robin 2004: 75).
Therefore, fear and power have been the concern of political thought and
shift the attention to their manipulation and production. Machiavelli is clear
on that a certain amount of fear breeds respect for a ruler. Therefore, some
rulers fuel and exploit fear to keep societies in compliance with ideological
pressure. This is still true today, as Horáková’s contribution in this volume
shows through the analysis of how politicians in South Africa use fear to in-
crease their power and control over society. In this case, fear is clearly related
to violence.

1
I wish to thank Hana Horáková for her insights and comments on these issues.
Risks and Fears from an Anthropological Viewpoint 15

The manipulation of fear is neither a prerogative of rulers nor of the analy-

sis of political thinkers. When we consider that we all live in an environment
that involves risks of all kinds, that we all have to learn to live with uncer-
tainty, then we must somehow learn how to control our fears. Individuals do
not remain passive and impotent towards fears: human agents confront so-
cially-produced risks individually. To do this, we develop what Edgar Morin
(1993) called anti-fear mechanisms. These are strategies used to mitigate,
allay and cope with fear. According to this author, we all use antidotes against
fear and establish rites to mitigate it. These mechanisms to reduce fear are
even more necessary to those who are most exposed to risks. For Beauchamp
(1996), the challenge is to find an adequate management of risk in order to
overcome fear. Françoise Zonabend (1993) conducted research on fear
amongst people living near a nuclear power plant. She affirms that in order to
live in adequate conditions of moral comfort, the people have to avoid con-
stantly recalling that they live in a ‘special’ area. Zonabend concludes that
people living close by a nuclear power plant are not afraid of nuclear power: if
you live there, it is because you risk nothing. The risk involved and the fear
perceived will actually be denied, diverted. Mechanisms of denial and defen-
sive strategies are implemented to protect people symbolically and to tame a
possibly dangerous and anxiety-provoking universe. Denis Duclos (1987:
247-248) observed the same type of risk denial mechanism in chemical indus-
try workers.
Other mechanisms to reduce fear have been developed by a ‘security in-
dustry’. If fear cannot be denied, it leads to seeking security by any means,
from gated community residences to security gadgets: a security business
develops. The feeling of insecurity is encouraged by some sectors of business
for whom promoting a new economic niche that develops security devices and
related jobs becomes profitable. Horáková calls it the ‘fear industry’ (in this
volume) and Furedi (2006) mentions the emergence of fear entrepreneurs who
benefit from people’s anxieties. Along with disseminating ever-expanding
objects of fear, a market of fear apparently allays fear. This ‘fear industry’ is
related to a new industry of risk, or a commodification of risk, which con-
structs new problems and markets new solutions for risk-fighting individual
agents (Elliot 2002: 305). Hence, risks and ensuing fears are both augmented
and rendered potentially manageable.
16 Andrea Boscoboinik

Much has been said and written about fear, particularly as a negative emo-
tion that has to be avoided. It is described as unworthy and unwanted. But fear
may also be seen as a positive emotion, a quality, a ‘property and an entitle-
ment’, as Caroline Humphrey suggests, thus as something valued positively
both by the one who experiences it and by others: having a legitimate fear can
be positive and a privilege (Humphrey 2013). Fear is more than emotion; it is
also a constructive strategy that can make the difference between dying and
staying alive. It can be a lifeline when it avoids, by escaping or running away,
a danger. By contrast, another typical consequence of fear is paralysis, usually
with a negative connotation. But how we cope with uncertainty shows an
active position towards fear: from experiencing threat and fear as negative and
paralysing feelings, to a positive understanding of fear in terms of productiv-
ity for change and attempts to shape the future. As Orit Hirsch reminds us in
this volume, ‘a social crisis may create fear and despair but may also trigger
creativity’. Even if fear is regarded as pernicious, it implies taking action to
remove it, thus creative thinking (Humphrey 2013: 289).

Scapegoats and Millennial Ideas to Overcome Fear

Creativity is thus necessary to find ways of overcoming fear. In order to un-
derstand these mechanisms, collective fears need to be distinguished from
social fears. To begin with, collective fears are not the sum of individual fears.
Risks perceived as threatening to society as a whole may lead to collective
fears. These are fears shared by an entire community and, as a shared feeling,
may give rise to a better social cohesion.
Specific circumstances will foster the development of collective fears.
Nowadays, for example, economic crisis, mass migration and natural disasters
seem to be the predominant sources of concern. The growing number of disas-
ters and uncertainties we are globally experiencing are increasing collective
fears. Some ‘big issues’ favour the development of collective fears: techno-
logical progress and its inherent risks; a sense of insecurity linked to unem-
ployment but also to urban violence; threats of mass migration; environmental
risks and the future of the planet; terrorism; mistrust towards politicians and
people in power; a spread of diseases, among others.
When collective fears lead to social action, such as imputing responsibili-
ties or finding a culprit, they become social fears. The instrumentalisation of
Risks and Fears from an Anthropological Viewpoint 17

collective fears turns them into social fears, especially if fuelled by the idea of
conspiracy. The social relationships and representations of various social
groups are revealed in the manifestation of social fears (Fabre 1993).
The best-known collective fears are those caused by the epidemics studied
by historians, particularly the plague in the Middle Ages in Europe. These
collective fears became social fears due to the reactions they engendered.
Social fears widen the social cleavage and lead to accusations. To stop the
crisis, the plague or any other threat, it is assumed that a single perpetrator or
blameable group needs to be identified. This designated culprit becomes a
scapegoat, source of all evils affecting society and responsible for the threat
felt by the community. The scapegoat, usually a minority group, becomes the
target of all anger and resentment. All charges and grievances are focused on
him/it. The scapegoat is usually an Other, easily identifiable by the fact that
he or she is different. Jean Delumeau (1978) recalls that in periods of plague,
the Other from whom all evil comes included beggars, vagabonds, Jews,
drunkards, nomads and jugglers. In times of epidemic they are the ones who
incur in the wrath of authorities or angry crowds. The designation of a scape-
goat can be made by political authorities or majority groups for political pur-
poses and serve as an alibi to arouse hostility against minorities and marginal
groups. For the sufferers, the scapegoat offers an explanation of the crisis
endured by the community. Hence, if the scapegoat is suppressed or removed,
the crisis will end, allowing a return to normality. Moreover, the community
will be brought together by the accusation against the scapegoat, who ulti-
mately plays a role in unifying the community against him. The scapegoat
becomes a way to channel fear: fear of being threatened, but also fear of the
Other.
The scapegoat mechanism is still present today as many chapters in this
book reveal. Even if the authors do not define them explicitly as scapegoats,
Muslim migrants in a Greek island (Hirsch), the Roma minority in two Ro-
manian villages (Mateoc) and minority indigenous groups in Peru (Rivera) are
some examples of blaming the Other as responsible for or at least suspects of
creating alarming situations or a feared crisis. Though almost everyone might
agree that the scapegoat mechanism is cruel and unfair, it continues to be
reproduced in other shapes or with other victims. These chapters show that
today as yesterday the ‘Other’, be it stranger, Muslim, coloniser, migrant,
18 Andrea Boscoboinik

Gypsy or anyone different, is not only a source of fear but may also become a
scapegoat, turning collective fears into social fears. At the same time, identi-
fying someone responsible for a given situation, an ‘evil-doer’, is a way to
channel fear and a mechanism to overcome it. The identification of a scape-
goat is reassuring. A scapegoat relieves: identifying a sacrificial scapegoat can
be a way to exorcise fears. In the aftermath of a disaster, for instance, finger-
pointing invariably blames one person. The first question people ask is ‘who
is to blame’. The same mechanism operates with any other crisis.
Another way of channelling fear is through millennial ideas and chiliastic
movements. Literally, millennialism refers to the belief that Christ will estab-
lish a one-thousand year reign on Earth before the Last Judgment. More
broadly defined, millennialists expect a time of peace and abundance here on
Earth, a Golden Age to come. The term ‘millennialism’ has been extended by
anthropologists and sociologists of religion beyond its strictly Christian sense
and is thus applied by analogy to other groups and movements, religious or
not, who are awaiting a radical transformation of the world and society. Mil-
lennial movements, understood as motivated by the hope for a better world,
are also found in non-Christian societies. The extensive research on millenni-
alism in Europe, particularly in the Middle Ages, but also in other parts of the
world and at different periods (for instance Worsley 1957; Pereira de Queiroz
1968; Kohn 1959; Mühlmann 1959), shows that these movements often arise
in societies in crisis. They frequently develop in an atmosphere of instability
and uncertainty, especially among populations that experience fear and op-
pression. Norman Cohn (1970) shows that in Europe during the Middle Ages
millennial aspirations grew among the lower classes, especially among the
uprooted peasants who had become disoriented and among the unskilled ur-
ban workers or unemployed. Millennial movements have developed particu-
larly among people who were colonised, among disgruntled peasants and/or
marginal people in cities.
But millennial hope is not exclusive to marginalised or past populations;
Pascal Bouvier (2008) shows that millennial hope can be found at the heart of
some contemporary political movements and among disappointed wealthier
classes. As a belief that predicts the advent of an era of happiness and perfec-
tion on Earth, millennialism refutes the existing society, which is considered
unfair, oppressive and a source of fear and anguish, and proclaims its coming
destruction. All millennial movements contain an idea of reversal, a fear
Risks and Fears from an Anthropological Viewpoint 19

turned into hope. Millennial hope seems then to act as an antidote to fear,
either a fear originating in apocalyptic beliefs or in consequence of uncertain
times. However, when great expectations of change turn into disillusion, fears
may again arise and individual and collective fears become social fears. Hana
Horáková illustrates this case with South African historical development.

Book Content
This book is the result of a workshop held during the EASA Conference 2012
in Paris. The aim of the workshop was to discuss expressions of fear in vari-
ous contexts, dealing with what people fear nowadays. The question underly-
ing the presentations in this workshop was what could collective and social
fears teach us about societies.
The chapters of this book have been solicited then to emphasise only a
small part of the multiple approaches to fear from an anthropological point of
view. These studies fall within the range of modern social anthropology and
the research methods are qualitative. Each chapter illustrates a different case
of collective and social fear.
The book opens with Hana Horáková’s chapter, cogently introducing the
study of fear in social sciences before concentrating on her analysis of fear
and violence in the cultural and political context of South African society. Her
paper aims to examine social fears in South African society and how these
could endanger a democratic system. This South African case could possibly
apply to other countries in which political transition, expected with great
hopes of profound changes, ultimately led to disillusions and an increase in
fear. In line with the central idea of this book, i.e. in order to understand emo-
tions we need to focus on their cultural origins, she shows how the meaning
and experience of fear are continually (re)shaped by cultural and historical
factors. In the context she analyses, a culture of violence combines with a
culture of fear.
The main idea of Andrea Friedli’s contribution is fear as a boundary-
making strategy, as mentioned also by Horáková. In her chapter, she analyses
how fear shapes boundary-making mechanisms in the particular context of
contemporary Tatar youth. At the same time, fears are symbolic expressions
of Tatar youth identities that feel threatened by uncertainty, which may be
labelled Westernisation, Global Islam, or the ethnic Other. As in the previous
20 Andrea Boscoboinik

chapter, fear is here analysed in the frame of a threat to identity and as a

boundary-making mechanism distinguishing Us from Them, the established
and the outsiders, me and the different Other. As Friedli affirms, fear may be
conceptualised as a social discourse that reflects matters of identity, power,
social hierarchies and cultural memories. Thus, she focuses on different fears
about ethnicity from a cosmopolitan and an ethno-national perspective in
order to better understand fears in a postsocialist Tatar urban youth context.
Orit Hirsch’s chapter about the locals on a Greek island accusing Muslim
immigrants of eating dogs illustrates a process of scapegoating, which is
acutely shaped in times of crisis times. Food and eating habits have frequently
been an excuse to stigmatise social groups. Greek islanders have developed
this process of scapegoating through what they consider a ‘savage eating
habit’. Among other consequences, this accusation allows the cohesion of one
group against another, strengthening the boundaries between Us and the Oth-
ers, thus blaming the Others for all the ills the local society is enduring. Her
subject falls within the general framework of the fear of ‘undesirable’ mi-
grants, as opposed to ‘desirable’ migrants, in the frame of different valued
mobilities: either labour migrants or élite members’ mobility. She offers an
eloquent analysis of the origins of this fear in a context of crisis, how fear of
the Other may become hate towards the Other and the possible political con-
sequences and actions, such as the increase in supporters of far-right political
parties and the call for migrants’ expulsion. Hybridity becomes dichotomy
again and the boundary-making mechanism, separating Us/Civilised from
Them/Savage Other in this case, is mediated by local dogs.
Raluca Mateoc also tackles the fear of the Other by focusing on the rela-
tionship between Roma minority and the majority population in two postso-
cialist Romanian villages. As in the previous chapters, the boundary-making
mechanisms are analysed via the interactions between minorities and majori-
ties. The discussion on migration is relevant here as well, but the accent is not
on the locals’ fear of migrants themselves, but rather on the consequences of
Roma migration to other countries and their return to the village or the money
they send home, which allows the Roma minority to become wealthier, thus
powerful. Sums earned in migration countries allow Roma to buy peasants’
houses, thus the local majority is afraid of a Roma ‘invasion’ and that ‘their’
Risks and Fears from an Anthropological Viewpoint 21

village will no longer be their own. If Gypsies2 keep on buying older people’s
houses, they will no longer be a minority in the village. Therefore, the local
majority is afraid of losing both its environmental and its cultural landscape.
While most chapters focus on one group’s fear, Mateoc investigates both
groups’ fears. Hence, she considers the Gypsies’ fears as well. It is interesting
to observe the different types and origins of fear in this context as well as the
church’s role in alleviating the Gypsies’ fear.
Fear leads to mistrust and mistrust generates fear. Mistrust of each other,
particularly of the Other, is activated and instrumentalised in periods of col-
lective fears. Insecurity also triggers distrust in human relationships, as well
as deterioration in cohabitation and solidarity. But if mistrust generates fear,
belief and faith ease it, as Raluca Mateoc mentions in her chapter.
Juan Javier Rivera Andía considers reciprocal majority – minority fears
too, but in the context of Peruvian Andes. An indigenous group, the Cañaren-
ses, is feared as poor, isolated and unfriendly by the national majority. In his
chapter, Rivera Andía provides an analysis of Andean rituals and folkloric
contests as a cultural scenario where contemporary fears are expressed. He
presents rituals structured around the fear of mountain spirits, but which the
same indigenous farmers also use to express their concerns regarding their
integration into national Peruvian society and its modernity. Hence, this chap-
ter introduces rituals as cultural performances that may help overcome both
ancient and contemporary fears. These cultural strategies show that people do
not remain passive about fear. In his analysis, he compares two expressions of
fear: one coming from outside the community and the other one rooted in the
community itself. Indigenous rituals are then described as reactions to over-
come fear and to reject or at least counteract labels and external ascriptions
imposed on them.
In her chapter, Tereza Hyánková deals with the fear of migration, but in-
stead of focusing on the fear of the host society as Hirsch, she considers the
feelings of migrants themselves, a dimension regularly overlooked, and of the
people left behind in the country of origin. To this purpose, she narrates the
experiences of a Kabyle family’s journeys between Algeria, France and the

2
The question of how to name this group, if Roma or Gypsy, and the reasons for choosing one
or the other, has been addressed in several studies dealing with this population. Mateoc uses
‘Gypsy’ in her chapter, because it is the name used by her informants.
22 Andrea Boscoboinik

Czech Republic. Even though fear is not the reason for migration in this case,
it is a constant part of the migration process, as the author shows via the ex-
perience of each family member, who can be seen as ideal types. She presents
the different dimensions of fear and anxieties expressed by each family mem-
ber and how these were determined by age, gender, expectations and status.
Although these fears and anxieties are voiced at an individual level, they rep-
resent and embody those felt by thousands of Kabyles. Hyánková draws on
the concept of habitus in order to understand the migration fears and anxieties.
She concludes that the differences in individual fears and anxieties are prod-
ucts of the automatic effect of the power of habitus.
The next three chapters link fear to historical processes, political transfor-
mations and social memory. Since fear is very much interconnected with
boundaries and their infringement (Douglas 1966), Michał Maleszka ap-
proaches the question of changing borders and how fear and social insecurity
became major factors conditioning the social construction of local identities in
the post-migrant community of the Warmia-Masuria province. To do so he
focuses on the period between 1945 and 1989. As in Hyánková’s chapter,
Maleszka bases his analysis on contemporary identity narratives: whereas the
former links fear to anxieties, the latter relates fear to trauma. In previous
chapters, the boundary-making strategy confirmed a separation between Us
and the Other that somehow ‘justified’ fear. In the case presented by
Maleszka, establishing a common space – the space of ‘what’s ours’ – is used
as a strategy to neutralise fear.
Stéphanie Rolland-Traina also bases her analysis on the life histories of
people who decided to migrate and those who decided to stay in a context of
political and national transformations between 1945 and 1965 on an island
that belonged to Yugoslavia at that time. If temporary migration to the United
States was a common activity amongst the male islanders before the political
regime’s change, the transition to communism, the closing of Yugoslav inter-
national borders together with the establishment of a police commander and
military barracks, favoured a generalised climate of fear in which migration
for some people was no longer a choice but a vital necessity. In fact, fear
implies a lack of freedom in the sense that the individuals’ actions are dictated
solely by fear. She affirms that these individual narratives reveal the political
and social insular context in which a sense of fear became predominant,
moreover associated with uncertainty and mistrust. In this paper she focuses
Risks and Fears from an Anthropological Viewpoint 23

on the relevant characteristic of fear as a political tool and an instrument of

power. She describes the generalised everyday fear: fear of speaking out, fear
of being overheard, fear of staying, fear of the authorities and finally what
may be described as an overall fear of the regime.
In her chapter Carole Lemee analyses expressions and manifestations of
fear in the field of social memory. She analyses the contribution of social
anthropology to help explain the complexity of the multidimensional relations
between memory and fear. The main focus is on history-memory relations and
fear associated to the Nazi era, World War II and the Holocaust. Here the fear
of the Other is another clear illustration of reciprocal fears. Among others, an
interesting point in analysing fear from a ‘socio-memorial’ approach is to
observe if the forms of fear linked to past situations are expressed or felt in
reference to the past, the present or the future. In fact, the remembered fear or
the fear from the past may influence the fear of repetition, the fear of history
repeating itself. Besides the fear of remembering, the fear of forgetting is also
a source of concern, as Lemee evokes. The analysis presented in this chapter
shows the risk of fear of the Other becoming hatred of the Other, leading to
extermination and genocides. This chapter concludes with important questions
that need to be posed when analysing forms of fear: ‘with respect to what’ are
forms of fear felt and experienced, ‘towards what’ are they directed, ‘who’
lives them or expressed them, ‘with respect to whom’ one is afraid, and ‘for
whom’.
Written by Marcello Mollica, the last chapter before the epilogue portrays
the fear of the ethnographer in the field. Fear is no longer fear of the Other,
but the writer’s own. It includes the ‘memory’ approach as well, because the
writer talks from today’s perspective of fears experienced during events that
took place eight years ago. He was not only sharing a time and a space during
research, but also the experience of fear with his informants in the field. In
situations like the one he describes, there is no place for observation; he be-
comes a full participant even when it was not planned in the research pro-
gramme. This account, based on personal experience, supports the idea that
fear implies a lack of freedom, as already mentioned in relation to Rolland-
Traina’s chapter. Here, the lack of freedom does not affect the choice of mi-
grating but daily activities. In Mollica’s words: ‘I could not even decide when
to go to the toilet, change my underwear, eat, drink, or even brush my teeth
24 Andrea Boscoboinik

(…). Coming to this realisation was the worst fear I experienced. Time and
space were selected for me, not by myself’.
The book closes with an epilogue written by Christian Giordano in which
he evokes the risk of falling in the trap of taking emotions for isolated reac-
tions linked to irrationality. On the contrary, emotions are embedded in cul-
tures and are strategic answers to particular contexts. He affirms that fear
incorporates good sense; it is a contextual rationality peculiar to the specific
situations under consideration. In this final essay the main points that have
emerged in the various contributions are synthetically analysed. All chapters
gathered in this book are thus illustrations of the mechanisms that engender
fear and the strategies implemented to overcome it or to face it.
To conclude, in analysing fears bearing in mind cultural and historical per-
spectives, two fundamental fears emerge: fear of death and fear of the Other.
This last one is particularly significant for anthropology, a discipline tradi-
tionally concerned with Otherness. If the Other, the ‘different’, is a primary
source of fear, the ‘similar’ may constitute a threat as well: paradoxically, as
Andrea Friedli mentions in her chapter quoting Hage’s ‘fear of the loss of the
other’ (1996), the Other’s disappearance is also a source of concern. More-
over, the fear of the Other is not always the fear of being overcome by the
Other, but also the fear of being symbolically devoured by the Other, thus the
danger of becoming the Other (see Friedli in this volume; Jeudy-Ballini and
Voisenat 2004). In Orit Hirsch’s chapter, the fear of the Other is literally the
fear of being eaten by the other: fear of the dog-eating migrants is that they
will ultimately eat people. The fear of the collective, ‘imagined’ or ‘projected’
Other weakens when physical proximity to this Other provides an opportunity
for collaboration, respect and mutuality, as shown in Raluca Mateoc’s chap-
ter. On the contrary, the ‘invisibility’ and the isolation of the Peruvian indige-
nous group, as Rivera Andía recalls, inhibit the intimacy that could favour
exchanges and mutual knowledge.
The Other has many different forms and faces; it is not necessarily a com-
munity, not necessarily a stranger. It might also be one person, someone from
or near the community but representing an oppressive and authoritarian
power, as the komandir described in Rolland-Traina’s chapter. Mistrust to-
wards this close or somewhat familiar Other raises fears that might be even
more pernicious.
 Risks and Fears from an Anthropological Viewpoint 25

The fear of the Other is based on the idea that the Other ‘pollutes’, to quote
Mary Douglas (Douglas 1966). The fear of the Other is finally a fear for the
Self, for the loss of identity and of cultural belonging, fear of the loss of ‘pu-
rity’. Cañarenses are afraid of losing their traditions and their identity. The
fear of migration is rooted in the notion that it will disrupt national order or
threaten the ‘national culture’. The growing fear of Islam stems from the idea
that it threatens European Christian civilisation and secular democracy. How-
ever, fear could also be a threat for democracy. Within this sector of the an-
thropology of fear, further research should proceed in a number of important
directions, mainly regarding the instrumentalisation of fear in order to demon-
ise the Other.

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