Sociology: The Culture of Fear

Everest Leo

Mr. Roddy

IHSS

23 September 2021

The Culture of Fear

    The Culture of Fear is a book written by Barry Glassner that discusses fear norms placed upon the public that potentially are just for the benefit of the ones striking the fear. While this sociological idea was first presented by Frank Furedi, Barry Glassner popularized it, and overall, it is a relatively new study. It is interesting because one would normally think that fear is a natural occurrence and is not decided upon, but in his book, Glassner argues that the instilling of fear into the public is something that is constantly being done. For example, he says that The War on Terror was a very beneficial movement/name for an issue such terrorism because it created a lot of fear in the public and thus allowed politicians to use the lowered reasoning capabilities (that fear usually causes) to sway the public in their favor due to the policies they made. There are other things he discusses as well that aren't on such a huge scale, such as fear of specific groups for isolated assault or terrorism. Even though one might assume what type of person committed such an act, if the suspect is found out to be someone different than what they thought, the fear can quickly shift to another group of people.

    I think this is an interesting subject to look at because not only is it different in each culture, but it can show us a lot about our culture. In the US, it's that, although we are a democracy/republic, there are large and influential corporations (due to the highly capitalistic economic system) and goal are not always shared between politicians and the people who elected them. This allows us to understand why fear is used a lot in politics, because, in a nation where it is hard for one entity to gain mass power, everyone wants control. As for fear in corporations, it usually boils down the fact that most companies are trying to sell something and usually fear creates a feeling of necessity for certain things that would help curb said fear.

    While I do agree with Glassner that "We had better learn to doubt our inflated fears before they destroy us." I also think that one should take all of the biased information that's becoming more common into account. What I mean is that nowadays, information can be posted and accessed by almost anyone (in the US at least) which makes it much easier for people to fall into the trap of thinking that all that's going on is bad things, creating artificial fear.

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