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The sum of all fears: commodification of social relations leaves individuals vulnerable and isolated.

Article Excerpt
A teenager is killed by an express train after forcing her way through a closed safety gate (the pedestrian underpass was closed due to crime fears) and her parents demand an end to express trains through the Bentleigh crossing. When a young man dives into shallow water in the Murray River rendering himself a quadriplegic, Berrigan Council is ordered to pay $5.6 million, being responsible for the log he had jumped from, and respond by fencing off swimming holes. As parents chauffeur their increasingly unfit and obese kids to school rather than expose them to the dangers of our suburban streets, the resulting traffic hazard leads some truly innovative schools to introduce the 'walking school bus'.

Stories like these, in which people respond to relatively farfetched dangers with exaggerated demands for safety, are characteristic of our times, and a determining feature of social and political life. They are also grist for the mill of works like Frank Furedi's Culture of Fear or Robert Hughes' Culture of Complaint, which criticise 'victim claims'. However, it is impossible to draw a line between the above problematic responses and the recent struggle of asbestos victims' groups to hold James Hardy to account or even the efforts of the 'stolen generation' to gain recognition and compensation, struggles which have challenged existing power elites just as did the great liberation struggles of the post World War Two period, if not rising to the same magnificent heights. However, an underlying anxiety,...

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