Culture of Fear Revisited

(Paperback, 2nd edition)

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Fear has become an ever-expanding part of life in the West in the twenty-first century. We live in terror of disease, abuse, stranger danger, environmental devastation and terrorist onslaught. We are bombarded with reports of new concerns for our safety and that of our children, and urged to take greater precautions and seek more protection. But compared to the past, or to the developing world, people in contemporary Western societies have much less familiarity with pain, suffering, debilitating disease and death. We actually enjoy an unprecedented level of personal safety.

When confronted with events like the destruction of the World Trade Centre, fear for the future is inevitable. But what happened on September 11th 2001 was in many ways an old fashioned act of terror, representing the destructive side of the human passions. Frank Furedi argues that the greater danger in our culture is the tendency to fear achievements representing a more constructive side of humanity. We panic about GM food, about genetic research, about the health dangers of mobile phones. The facts often fail to support the scare stories about new or growing risks to our health and safefy. Our obsession with theoretical risks is in danger of distracting society from dealing with the old-fashioned dangers that have always threatened our lives. In this new edition Furedi relates his own thinking on the sociology of fear to the thought of earlier thinkers such as Darwin and Fred and to the sociological tradition of Durkheim, C. Wright Mills, Anthony Giddens and others.

Reviews

Mentioned in Psychologies (main) in article by Hannah Borno, 1 March 2009

Author Bio

Frank Furedi is Professor of Sociology at the University of Kent, UK. He is the author of fourteen books including Why Education isn't Educating (2010), The Politics of Fear (2007), Where have all the Intellectuals Gone (2005), Therapy Culture (2003) and Paranoid Parenting (2001).Furedi'sbooks offer an authoritative yet lively account of key developments in contemporary cultural life, with a particular interest in precautionary culture and risk aversion in the West. He is the UK sociologist most widely cited by the UK media and his books have been translated into eleven languages. He appearsfrequently on television and radio in the English speaking world and beyond and he publishes regular articles with a range of newspapers. Frank Furedi fled to England in 1956 from Hungary. He was appointed Professor of Social Studies at the University of Kent but celebrated also as a pundit and public intellectual throughout the English speaking world. His most celebrated books include Paranoid Parenting (reissued by Continuum) The Culture of Fear and Where Have All the Intellectuals Gone. His books are widely reviewed and he is on the lecture circuit from Chatham House to Adelaide. Frank Furedi is Professor of Sociology at the University of Kent at Canterbury. He is the author of numerous books including Culture of Fear, Invitation to Terror and Paranoid Parenting, all published by Continuum.