Domestic Fortress ─ Fear and the new home front

Today's home has become a kind of fortress that says as much about our need for privacy as it does about ensuring our security. Fortress homes, gated communities and elaborate defensive systems have become everyday features of urban life today, highlighting the depth of fear as well as desire for prestige and social display. Domestic Fortress offers a fresh analysis of our homes, our demands for security and anxieties about invasion, loss and finding seclusion in a worrying and divided world. As industries and politicians raise our fears further, Domestic Fortress considers why gating and fortress designs, beloved of celebrities and the super-rich, have become the ordinary feature of societies affected by rising social inequalities, the exclusion of strangers and constant anticipation of disaster and loss in our daily lives. Using a rich range of sources from cutting-edge research to media accounts, Domestic Fortress considers the fantasies and realities of dangers to the contemporary home and its inhabitants and details the extreme measures now used in the pursuit of total safety.

Rowland Atkinson is Chair in Inclusive Societies at the University of Sheffield

Sarah Blandy is Professor of Law at the University of Sheffield