Guest Blog Post from Mirjam Sagi, One of the 2022 New and Emerging Scholar Award Recipients

We have a special guest blog post from Mirjam Sagi who was one of our recipients for the 2022 Gender, Place and Culture New and Emerging Scholar Award. Thank you, Mirjam, for contributing this blog post and describing your research in more detail! You can connect with Mirjam on Twitter @MiriSagi.

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I am grateful for Gender Place and Culture for the New and Emerging Scholar award both as positive feedback and as a financial support. I am looking forward to presenting my PhD research results at the Paris 2022 UGI Centennial Congress, and I am especially happy to finally attend a conference in person having spent half of my PhD in isolation and online.

What is the role of fear in political rhetoric and how does it affect public space?

In my research I address this question by drawing on critical theory in general, and feminist geography in particular. Fearmongering and Othering gained new momentum in political rhetoric in Hungary in the past decade or so. At the same time, fear and security have become increasingly determining factors in urban planning and policies, having ambiguous effects on public space as a central element of democracy, as well as on public/private relations as a politically charged geographical organiser of gendered-social relations. Therefore, understanding and (re)addressing the security and fear in the context of urban public space is important not only to have a city where one could feel safe and free, but potentially to have a city that is equally safe and free for all. My research focuses on the ways in which fear and women’s bodies, have been instrumentalised in political rhetoric (at multiple geographical scales) shaping public spaces, in a time, when both market forces are increasingly determining (further criminalising the poor), and governments are taking authoritarian turns (spreading xenophobia).

I approach my research through a feminist political economy lens and by the analysis of political rhetoric across selected – central and local – government related media outlets in Hungary (e.g., local newspapers, campaigns, billboards), using computer software for qualitative coding and content analysis as research methods.