Fear of violence has always shadowed the concern with civility

Evidence

The threat (and fear) of violence accordingly always seems to have been lurking behind or beneath – to be shadowing – the concern with civility. “Uncivility,” John Keane remarks, was conceived as “the ghost that permanently haunted civil society,” its permanent enemy. What happens to civility, it might be asked, when the ordinary calculation of risks becomes the risk society or, more pressingly, when threats to (a) society become the threatened society, and a society projecting “no fear” becomes the society founded upon it? — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 234

Categorization

• XREF: Resonates with Ulrich Beck’s ‘risk society’ concept and with surveillance-studies work on society structured around threat.