This volume analyses cultural perceptions of safety and security that have shaped modern European societies. The articles present a wide range of topics, from feelings of unsafety generated by early modern fake news to safety issues related to twentieth-century drug use in public space. The volume demonstrates how ‘safety’ is not just a social or biological condition to pursue but also a historical and cultural construct. In philosophical terms, safety can be interpreted in different ways, referring to security, certainty or trust. What does feeling safe and thinking about a safe society mean to various groups of people over time? The articles in this volume are bound by their joint effort to take a constructionist approach to emotional expressions, artistic representations, literary narratives and political discourses of (un)safety and their impact on modern European society.

In his groundbreaking Imagined Communities, first published in 1983, Benedict Anderson argued that members of a communityexperience a Ÿdeep, horizontal camaraderie.Œ Despite being strangers, members feel connected in a web of imagined experiences.Yet while Anderson’s insights have been hugely influential, they remain abstract: it is difficult to imagine imagined communities.How do they evolve and how is membership constructed cognitively, socially and culturally? How do individuals and communitiescontribute to group formation through the act of imagining? And what is the glue that holds communities together?Imagining Communities examines actual processes of experiencing the imagined community, exploring its emotive force in a number of case studies. Communal bonding is analysed, offering concrete insights on where and by whom the nation (or social group) is imagined and the role of individuals therein. Offering eleven empirical case studies, ranging from the premodern to the modern age, this volume looks at and beyond the nation and includes regional as well as transnational communities as well.