| Summary: | The aim of this thesis is to examine the fear of crime in old peoples lives. Notwithstanding that the age category is exposed to crime to a low degree, old people are experiencing a great fear of crime relative younger people. This is the paradox of fear, also recognized in gender studies. The question is how this paradox can be understood. To answer this, twelve elderly men and women have been interviewed and the reports about crime in the local newspaper, Norrköpings Tidningar, has been analyzed, through discourse analysis. The discursive construction of fear is here discussed in terms of discourses of a fearful society, and stereotypes of old age. The hegemonic discourse of old age is collaborating with a discourse, in this paper called the discourse of a threatening society. Old peoples fear is produced, through the interplay of these discourses, because they are objectified and seen as victims alongside with a construction of an ever-present threat.
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