Maternal Risk Anxiety in Belfast: Claims, Evaluations, Responses

This article considers the social logic of maternal anxiety about risks posed to children in segregated, post-conflict neighbourhoods. Focusing on qualitative research with mothers in Belfast’s impoverished and divided inner city, the article draws on the interactionist perspective in the sociology...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Sociology (Oxford) 2017-10, Vol.51 (5), p.924-939
Main Author: Smyth, Lisa
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Acknowledgment
Anxiety
Children
Conflict
Emotion recognition
Emotions
Inner city
Loyalty
Mothers
Neighborhoods
Qualitative research
Social anxiety
Sociology of emotions
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Summary:This article considers the social logic of maternal anxiety about risks posed to children in segregated, post-conflict neighbourhoods. Focusing on qualitative research with mothers in Belfast’s impoverished and divided inner city, the article draws on the interactionist perspective in the sociology of emotions to explore the ways in which maternal anxiety drives claims for recognition of good mothering, through orientations to these neighbourhoods. Drawing on Hirschman’s model of exit, loyalty and voice types of situated action, the article examines the relationship between maternal risk anxiety and evaluations of neighbourhood safety. In arguing that emotions are important aspects of claims for social recognition, the article demonstrates that anxiety provokes efforts to claim status, in this context through the explicit affirmation of non-sectarian mothering.
ISSN:0038-0385
1469-8684
DOI:10.1177/0038038515608129