Experiences of anxiety, concerns about risk and threat and powerful moral panics make up some of the most significant collective emotional experiences shaping contemporary life in our globalised, mediatised age. This introductory chapter argues that the fast-changing and deeply unequal context of South Africa requires a reconsideration of assumptions about how people and societies process risk and fear and the effect that these states have on how we live. Drawing on the work of theorists like Zygmunt Bauman (2007, 2006), Chas Critcher (2011), David Altheide (2002) and Sara Ahmed (2014), it discusses the idea of the culture of fear and make an argument for the importance of taking emotion seriously as a collective and political practice. It considers how ideas around risk, anxiety (social rather than psychoanalytic) and moral panic, emerging as they do from theorists based in Europe and America, largely fail to take the global south into account. The chapter suggests an outline for a renegotiation of these categories of theory and illustrates the way in which the book’s case studies are part of this new critical agenda. The chapter ends by introducing the four case studies and outlining some of the connections and equivalences between them. The chapter also argues for the relevance of localised cultural analysis as a way of drawing conclusions about the intersection of identity, emotion and politics in South Africa.

In the course of the 1970s, Britain’s relative economic decline triggered by the end of empire mutated into a full-blown crisis of hegemony spilling over into the political and cultural domains, thoroughly destabilising capitalist rule. Unprecedented fissures as well as unexpected solidarities would become distinctive features of this period, as men and women from all backgrounds were thrust into the struggle over the future direction of society. This chapter documents the new utopian projects of socialist transformation that emerged, and the infrastructures and ideas that animated them. At times, these projects moved well beyond the logic of Labourism to realise the desire of oppressed and exploited people of all colours to live a life of happiness and contentedness. It also maps the simultaneous break from the neoliberal right initiated by Powell and realised by Margaret Thatcher in her capture of the Conservative Party leadership. Her subsequent victory in May 1979 would launch the most concerted attack on the organised working class since the 1920s, undermining the organisational infrastructure that sustained the politics and language of class and socialism. By recovering this hidden history in its complex and contradictory totality, this chapter shows that the transformation of Britain from a Fordist model of capitalist accumulation to a more flexible regime of accumulation that we now understand as neoliberalism was not inevitable. Rather, it was dependent upon extinguishing a counter-hegemonic project that crystallised in the form of an emergent multi-ethnic politics of class. This is why we understand neoliberalism as a capitalist counter-revolution.

This new introduction reflects on developments in the two decades since the publication of the book in 2000. It describes the profound changes in the international legal sphere, notably the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, intractable conflicts that have weakened the authority of multilateral institutions and the growth of right-wing populism. The chapter questions the overall optimism about the power of international law to improve the lives of women manifest in the book and emphasises the ambivalence of the international legal order for women. The chapter starts by considering the meaning of the term ‘feminist analysis’ and then moves on to review some of the history of feminist engagements with international law, observing that the international sphere has long provided a beacon of hope for women. Its focus is an area that had barely emerged when Boundaries was published: the UN Security Council’s ‘women, peace and security’ (WPS) agenda, which commenced with resolution 1325 adopted in October 2000. This field illustrates a pattern of apparent normative progress, which is undermined by gendered institutional cultures. The most acceptable feminist ideas internationally have been increasing the participation of women and combating violence against women, although these have faced many hurdles. It has been even more difficult to achieve normative and cultural change to support transformative equality for women, or an international legal order where issues of sex and gender and other structural inequalities are given sustained attention and adequate resources for achievement.

Statehood is fundamental to traditional international legal doctrine. This chapter investigates the international legal notion of statehood, the doctrine of recognition, aspects of statehood, such as jurisdiction and state responsibility, as well as the concept of self-determination as a way to acquire statehood. It points to the invisibility of women in the formation and application of these legal principles and studies their impact on women’s lives. The chapter examines self-determination and Palestinian women. The chapter challenges the standard idea that the state is a neuter, without a sexed identity and argues that the paradigm state is constructed in a gendered way, as male, with female features only in specific contexts. It considers ways in which the state could be reconceived using feminist ideas.

This chapter considers recent increases in homicides and ‘higher harm’ violence recorded in England and Wales since 2015 and draws upon ethnographic data collected as part of an ongoing research study of male violence to inform the discussion. Increased interpersonal violence in recent times must be understood in relation to both recent austerity measures and the longer-term decline of industrial working-class communities, which, it is argued here, collectively constitute a form of ‘slow’ violence.

Trauma and suffering are part of the fabric of everyday social life, and, as such, have become an increasing concern in contemporary sociology. Drawing on data from our study, this chapter explores the deeply traumatic nature of baby loss. Parents often articulated an acute sense of shock at their unexpected loss, and a fear of what they might witness when they miscarried or delivered their baby. Other parents spoke about clutching at straws as they experienced agonising days of watching and waiting while their baby fought for life in intensive care. Regardless of the type of loss experienced, many parents articulated an acute sense of trauma and loss at being discharged from hospital with no baby to hold in their arms. Reflecting on emerging themes in the sociological literature on trauma, the chapter concludes by focusing on the ways in which trauma around baby loss can be experienced as both an individual psychological event as well as a collective experience.

The chapter outlines the international legal prohibition of the unilateral use of force in international relations in pursuance of the maintenance of international peace and security. It considers the particular ways that armed conflict impacts upon women. It examines the self-defence exception to prohibition against the use of force and other contested exceptions – self-determination; humanitarian intervention – and argues that the gendered nature of the international regime makes it inadequate to deal effectively with the realities of their lives for women in conflict-affected societies.

The aim of the introduction is to provide readers who are new to the literature with an overview of key debates in the areas of baby loss and post-mortem practice. It begins by outlining existing literature on different types of baby loss (miscarriage, late fetal loss, stillbirth and SIDS). It also provides a summary of the different types of post-mortem available to parents across the UK (from full post-mortem to minimally invasive examinations). This chapter also provides an introduction to the taboo topic of paediatric post-mortem examination and the hidden world of the mortuary. It outlines the theoretical framework for the book, engaging with a wide range of literature on sensory sociology. The introduction also gives some background information on the research on which this book is based and offers a useful discussion about conducting sensitive research. The aims and methodology of the study are outlined, including a focus on such issues as sampling, data collection and analysis. The final section of the introduction outlines the book’s structure, providing a brief synopsis of each chapter.

This chapter documents the impact of the New Labour project on the crumbling of the democratic settlement. When it came into office in 1997, New Labour accepted the fundamental coordinates of neoliberalism. Blair’s government refashioned the Labour Party’s representational role. If Thatcher defeated the working class, New Labour erased it as a social force. In doing so, class was remade through race, as different fractions of the working class were sorted and organized into ethno-racialized appellations through the discourse of state multiculturalism. In the absence of a multi-ethnic politics and language of class, racialized identifications like ‘white working class’ were introduced to fill the political vacuum both as a force for mobilization and recognition. These national developments around the racialization of class combined with imperialist wars produced new cultural racisms, most notably anti-Muslim racism. The effect was to energise claims that ‘Muslim culture’ is in some way incompatible with modern liberal democratic states like Britain and their intrinsic commitment to so-called tolerance and diversity. One part of the working class was now pitted against the other in such a way that obvious commonalties were occluded or erased altogether. These developments helped pave the way for the racist blowback of Brexit in the decade that followed, and further eroded the basis of the democratic settlement.

How can we best describe refugees’ post-reception livelihoods in European cities? To what extent does the fact of having a protection status make one included in its ‘mainstream community’? This chapter tries to answer these questions and show the differential inclusion that status-holder refugees are subjected to. While many studies have explored undocumented refugees’ exclusion and absence of a sense of belonging as a consequence of their lack of legal status, here we shed light on refugees who obtain a protection status and their feelings of dislocation and marginality as emerging from three crucial dimensions: space, time and general attitude. To do so, the chapter draws from the experience of a group of Sub-Saharan African men with protection status who live in the Italian city of Milan following the recent ‘refugee crisis’. Based on qualitative observations and in-depth interviews, the chapter points out how refugees in Milan make up a stratum of people equipped with access to rights which are granted formally, but not in practice. Taken together, it is argued that although cities are often depicted as having the potential to foster new forms of solidarity and social inclusion, urban contexts are still confronted with processes of differential inclusion that impact adversely on refugees’ inclusion.