Big ugly lumps? (Counter)terrorism and the everyday atmospheres of Hostile Vehicle Mitigation

The AtmoCT UK team’s new academic publication Big ugly lumps? (Counter)terrorism and the everyday atmospheres of Hostile Vehicle Mitigation is now available in the per reviewed journal CITY.

The article focuses on the undramatic and ordinary public encounters with terror threat and counterterrorism physical measures for Hostile Vehicle Mitigation (HVM) in Birmingham. The atmospheres around counterterrorism that the city’s security officials and business representatives aim to produce seek to reassure the public rather than cause alarm, and this has led to ambivalent acceptance of HVM by city centre users. Our data show a variety of public everyday experiences of HVM, revealing hosts of dispositions and attitudes around mobility and sharing space, aesthetic dislike and playfulness, created by the interplay between HVM’s physical presence and the human practices navigating them.