At the dawn of the twenty-first century, we live in a time of fear, what many scholars, especially in the US, have referred to as “The Culture of Fear” (Bourke 2005, Furedi 1997, Glassner 1999). Whether it is the fear of natural disasters, the fear of environmental catastrophes or the fear of terrorist attacks, we currently live in a state of constant anxiety about the dangers that could strike unannounced and at any moment. Living with constant anxiety and fear is also a reality for many children and teenagers who, as several surveys have shown, fear the present as well as the future.

By focusing on children ́s narratives and adult memories of fears in childhood, this paper aims to examine fears as cultural and embodied experiences. In what way are emotions (i.e. fears) socially and culturally conditioned? What cultural narratives concerning fear are articulated in the children´s accounts, and what narratives are available in different social and cultural settings? How do children make sense of fear as an embodied perception and experience and in what ways do fears create identification and special conditions of everyday life? I understand emotions as a set of communicative symbols whose meaning is not obvious but depends on individual experiences. Feelings of fear is thus not something that the individual has, in itself, independent of the surrounding community, but are here understood as a cultural phenomenon and something that takes place in actions, in interaction with and dependence on other people (eg Ahmed 2004).