The Politics of Attachment: Towards a Secure Society.

Edited by Sebastian Kraemer and Jane Roberts (London: Free Association Books, 1996. xvi+254 pp. 15.95 [pounds sterling])

Anxiety, insecurity, worry, uncertainty, risk. Belonging, cohesion, community, well-being. These terms have of late come to the fore, not only within criminology (where they have figured prominently in reconceptualizations of `the fear of crime'), but also as part and parcel of much recent sociological and political discourse on `the state of the nation'. This book addresses in various ways both these criminological and more general debates. Based on a conference held at the Tavistock Clinic, London in March 1995, it brings together (among others) psychologists, sociologists, management theorists, MPs, an economist, a journalist and a lawyer whose shared purpose is to inject a concern with attachment (theory) into contemporary politics and social policy. …