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How Fear Works: Culture of Fear in the Twenty-First Century Hardcover – 14 Jun. 2018
In 1997, Frank Furedi published a book called Culture of Fear. It was widely acclaimed as perceptive and prophetic. Now Furedi returns to his original theme, as most of what he predicted has come true. In How Fear Works, Furedi seeks to explain two interrelated themes: why has fear acquired such a morally commanding status in society today and how has the way we fear today changed from the way that it was experienced in the past?
Furedi argues that one of the main drivers of the culture of fear is unravelling of moral authority. Fear appears to provide a provisional solution to moral uncertainty and is for that reason embraced by a variety of interests, parties and individuals. Furedi predicts that until society finds a more positive orientation towards uncertainty the politicisation of fear will flourish.
Society is continually bombarded with the message that the threats it faces are incalculable and cannot be managed or contained. The ascendancy of this outlook has been paralleled by the cultivation of helplessness and passivity - all this has heightened people's sense of powerlessness and anxiety. As a consequence we are constantly searching for new forms of security, both physical and ontological. What are the drivers of fear, what is the role of the media in its promotion, and who actually benefits from this culture of fear? These are some of the issues Furedi tackles to explain the current predicament. He believes that through understanding how fear works, we can encourage attitudes that will help bring about a less fearful future.
- Print length320 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherBloomsbury Continuum
- Publication date14 Jun. 2018
- Dimensions16.38 x 2.88 x 23.95 cm
- ISBN-10147294772X
- ISBN-13978-1472947727
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- Publisher : Bloomsbury Continuum; 1st edition (14 Jun. 2018)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 320 pages
- ISBN-10 : 147294772X
- ISBN-13 : 978-1472947727
- Dimensions : 16.38 x 2.88 x 23.95 cm
- Best Sellers Rank: 647,869 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 7,202 in Cultural Studies
- 9,330 in Religious Studies (Books)
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![Frank Furedi](https://cdn.statically.io/img/m.media-amazon.com/images/I/A1-6pJU3pEL._SY600_.jpg)
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I’m writing this against a backdrop of a shortish heatwave which has created warnings & nanny advice from government which rather supports Furedi’s argument about the constant inflation of the range of activities deemed to be ‘risky’. We seem to have health alerts on a regular basis, often contradicting an earlier alert. I loved the stat that 40 out of 50 common ingredients picked randomly from a cookery book has an article reporting on their cancer-causing properties! Whilst one can laugh at some of this fear-mongering, t has serious implications. The increasing trend in our universities is to protect students from hearing anything that might upset them or challenge their beliefs – surely the point of the university experience. In wider society, the level of infantilisation of people who seem to have lost their powers of common sense and sense of agency whether it is how to behave during a heatwave or a pandemic, how to assess risk, etc is deeply concerning. Self-reliance seems to have been replaced with extreme risk aversion and an underlying sense of uncertainty allied with a tendency to inflate threats into potential catastrophes. He cites as an example the warnings about the dangers of barbecues by university professor in 2006 – everything from the possibility of salmonella poisoning to cancer from barbecued meat to the environmental hazards of barbecue coals. Fifteen years later in our current minor heatwave we have people admonishing us not to light barbecues for fear of starting fires which will become uncontrollable and getting skin cancer because we might be out in the sun. It is a wonder any of us get into our cars given the multiple dangers that holds!
The future, and the fact that it is necessarily uncertain, is also a cause for alarm and a place where existential threats abound. This gives scope for ‘potentials’ to be blown out of all proportion. There are some interesting comments about the use of fear to change behaviours to achieve societal ‘goods’ e.g. a climate activists who justified distorting information in order to capture the public imagination. I suspect the same could be said of the Covid pandemic but the fear-mongering can have adverse consequences too; I see many older single people who are now frightened to go out even though there is a proven benefit to their health from socialising with others. Be careful what you wish for.
Overall, this is a sober analysis of how the insidious culture of fear is penetrating our lives. It makes particularly good reading now, in the aftermath of two years of restrictions on our lives than would have seemed inconceivable at the beginning of the pandemic, and also with the climate warriors ramping up fears about global warning & climate change against a very mixed body of evidence. The danger, of course, is that the fear culture backfires and cynicism kicks in because of rampant scare-mongering – next time we might really need to be concerned but because of confected hysteria last time, no-one believes it.
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The author demonstrates the damaging consequences of the contemporary zeitgeist and points out some solutions.
I recommend this work since it helps readers to see through the bombarding information we are exposed to. Moreover it made me think about my own approach towards uncertainty in everyday life.
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the book is academic and written as a resource. It is not an easy read but an important one.