Download or read book Culture of Fear written by Frank Furedi and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2002-04-30 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 Center, 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 human passions. Frank Furedi argues that the greater danger in our culture is the tendency to fear achievements that represent a more constructive side of humanity. We panic about genetically engineered food, about genetic research, about the health dangers of mobile phones. The facts, however, often fail to support the scare stories about new or growing risks to our health and safety. Instead, it is our obsession with theoretical risks that is in danger of distracting us from dealing with the old-fashioned dangers that have always threatened our lives.
Download or read book Cultures of Fear written by Uli Linke and published by Pluto Press. This book was released on 2009-12-15 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Cultures of Fear, a truly world-class line up of scholars explore how governments use fear in order to control their citizens. The "social contract" gives modern states responsibility for the security of their citizens, but this collection argues that governments often nurture a culture of fear within their contries. When people are scared of "terrorist" threats, or "alarming rises" in violent crime they are more likely to accept oppressive laws from their rulers. Cultures of Fear is and interdisciplinary reader for students of anthropology and politics. Contributors include Noam Chomsky, Slavoj Zizek, Jean Baudrillard, Catharine MacKinnon, Neil Smith, Cynthia Enloe, David L. Altheide, Cynthia Cockburn and Carolyn Nordstrum.
Download or read book Following Jesus in a Culture of Fear written by Scott Bader-Saye and published by Brazos Press. This book was released on 2020-11-03 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fear has taken on an outsized role in our current cultural and political context. Manufactured threats are advanced with little to no evidence of danger, while real threats are exaggerated for self-interested gain. This steady diet of fear produces unhealthy moral lives, leading many Christians to focus more on the dangers we wish to avoid than the goods we wish to pursue. As a fearful people, we are tempted to make safety our highest good and to make virtues of suspicion, preemption, and accumulation. But this leaves the church ill-equipped to welcome the stranger, love the enemy, or give to those in need. This timely resource brings together cultural analysis and theological insight to explore a Christian response to the culture of fear. Laying out a path from fear to faithfulness, theologian Scott Bader-Saye explores practices that embody Jesus's call to place our trust in him, inviting Christian communities to take the risks of hospitality, peacemaking, and generosity. This book has been revised throughout, updated to connect with today's readers, and includes new discussion questions.
Download or read book How Fear Works written by Frank Furedi and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-10-22 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explains 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? The author 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. He predicts that until society finds a more positive orientation towards uncertainty the politicization of fear will flourish
Download or read book Radiation and Reason written by Wade Allison and published by YPD-BOOKS. This book was released on 2009 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a positive and accessible account of the effect of radiation on life that brings good news for the future of mankind. For more than half a century the view that radiation represents an extreme hazard has been accepted. This book challenges that view by facing the question "How dangerous is ionising radiation?" Briefly the answer is that radiation is about a thousand times less hazardous than suggested by current safety standards. For many this will come as a surprise and then quickly raise a second question "Why are people so worried about radiation?" This is the out-of-date result of Cold War politics combined with a concern about radiation that was appropriate in an earlier age when the scientific understanding was limited. In the book these answers are explained in accessible language and related directly to modern scientific evidence and understanding, for instance the high levels of radiation used to the benefit of health in every major hospital. Four facts illustrate the need for a new understanding. 1. The radiation levels in the nuclear waste storage hall at Sellafield, UK are so low (1 micro-sievert per hour) that anyone would have to stay there for a million hours to receive the same dose that any patient on a course of radiotherapy treatment receives to their healthy tissue in a single day (1 sievert or gray). 2. The radiation dose experienced by the survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs caused 0.6% to die of radiation-induced cancer between 1950 and 2000, that is about 1/20 of the chance of dying of cancer anyway and less than the chance of being killed on US highways in that period. 3. The wildlife at Chernobyl today is reported to be thriving, despite being radioactive. 4. The mortality of UK radiation workers before age 85 from all cancers is 15-20% lower than comparable groups. The case for a complete change in attitude towards radiation safety is unrelated to the effects of climate change. But the realisation that radiation and nuclear energy are much safer than is usually supposed is of extreme importance to the current discussion of alternatives to fossil fuels and their relative costs.
Download or read book Fear Itself written by Christopher D. Bader and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2020-03-03 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An antidote to the culture of fear that dominates modern life From moral panics about immigration and gun control to anxiety about terrorism and natural disasters, Americans live in a culture of fear. While fear is typically discussed in emotional or poetic terms—as the opposite of courage, or as an obstacle to be overcome—it nevertheless has very real consequences in everyday life. Persistent fear negatively effects individuals’ decision-making abilities and causes anxiety, depression, and poor physical health. Further, fear harms communities and society by corroding social trust and civic engagement. Yet politicians often effectively leverage fears to garner votes and companies routinely market unnecessary products that promise protection from imagined or exaggerated harms. Drawing on five years of data from the Chapman Survey of American Fears—which canvasses a random, national sample of adults about a broad range of fears—Fear Itself offers new insights into what people are afraid of and how fear affects their lives. The authors also draw on participant observation with Doomsday preppers and conspiracy theorists to provide fascinating narratives about subcultures of fear. Fear Itself is a novel, wide-ranging study of the social consequences of fear, ultimately suggesting that there is good reason to be afraid of fear itself.
Download or read book Risk written by Dan Gardner and published by McClelland & Stewart. This book was released on 2009-02-24 with total page 510 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the tradition of Malcolm Gladwell, Gardner explores a new way of thinking about the decisions we make. We are the safest and healthiest human beings who ever lived, and yet irrational fear is growing, with deadly consequences — such as the 1,595 Americans killed when they made the mistake of switching from planes to cars after September 11. In part, this irrationality is caused by those — politicians, activists, and the media — who promote fear for their own gain. Culture also matters. But a more fundamental cause is human psychology. Working with risk science pioneer Paul Slovic, author Dan Gardner sets out to explain in a compulsively readable fashion just what that statement above means as to how we make decisions and run our lives. We learn that the brain has not one but two systems to analyze risk. One is primitive, unconscious, and intuitive. The other is conscious and rational. The two systems often agree, but occasionally they come to very different conclusions. When that happens, we can find ourselves worrying about what the statistics tell us is a trivial threat — terrorism, child abduction, cancer caused by chemical pollution — or shrugging off serious risks like obesity and smoking. Gladwell told us about “the black box” of our brains; Gardner takes us inside, helping us to understand how to deconstruct the information we’re bombarded with and respond more logically and adaptively to our world. Risk is cutting-edge reading.
Download or read book Fear written by Joanna Bourke and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2015-02-05 with total page 467 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fear is one of the most basic and most powerful of all the human emotions. Sometimes it is hauntingly specific: flames searing patterns on the ceiling, a hydrogen bomb, a terrorist. More often, anxiety overwhelms us from some source within: there is an irrational panic about venturing outside, a dread of failure, a premonition of doom. In this astonishing book we encounter the fears and anxieties of hundreds of British and American men, women and children. From fear of the crowd to agoraphobia, from battle experiences to fear of nuclear attack, from cancer to AIDS, this is an utterly original insight into the mindset of the twentieth century from one of most brilliant historians and thinkers of our time.
Download or read book You Have the Power written by Frances Moore Lappe and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2005-04-21 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Frances Moore Lappé-author of the million-selling Diet for a Small Planet-and Jeffrey Perkins offer the radical notion that our fears can be a source of energy to create the lives and the world we want. Now more than ever, it seems, our lives and the lives of our loved ones are at risk. Our normal response is to retreat. But what if fear were not a negative force but a positive one-a source of energy and strength? Sharing their own intimate journeys with fear, as well as the experiences of others, the authors offer seven liberating notions that can help unleash your power to walk into the unknown and create a more fulfilling, authentic life.
Download or read book Bullies written by Ben Shapiro and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-07-08 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "From the editor-at-large of Breitbart.com, a timely and compelling look at how liberals use bullying toward their opponents on today's top political issues"--
Download or read book Governing Through Crime written by Jonathan Simon and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2007-02-03 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Across America today gated communities sprawl out from urban centers, employers enforce mandatory drug testing, and schools screen students with metal detectors. Social problems ranging from welfare dependency to educational inequality have been reconceptualized as crimes, with an attendant focus on assigning fault and imposing consequences. Even before the recent terrorist attacks, non-citizen residents had become subject to an increasingly harsh regime of detention and deportation, and prospective employees subjected to background checks. How and when did our everyday world become dominated by fear, every citizen treated as a potential criminal?In this startlingly original work, Jonathan Simon traces this pattern back to the collapse of the New Deal approach to governing during the 1960s when declining confidence in expert-guided government policies sent political leaders searching for new models of governance. The War on Crime offered a ready solution to their problem: politicians set agendas by drawing analogies to crime and redefined the ideal citizen as a crime victim, one whose vulnerabilities opened the door to overweening government intervention. By the 1980s, this transformation of the core powers of government had spilled over into the institutions that govern daily life. Soon our schools, our families, our workplaces, and our residential communities were being governed through crime.This powerful work concludes with a call for passive citizens to become engaged partners in the management of risk and the treatment of social ills. Only by coming together to produce security, can we free ourselves from a logic of domination by others, and from the fear that currently rules our everyday life.
Download or read book At Stake written by Edward Ingebretsen and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2001-11-14 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "At Stake is an analysis of popular culture, a critique of a secularized religious discourse, as well as a plea for cleaning up the ethics of public speech. Edward J. Ingebretsen explores the social construction of monstrousness in public discourse, examining the uses of transgression and deviancy in tabloids, mainstream press, television, magazines, sermons, speeches, and popular fiction."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book Historicizing Fear written by Travis D. Boyce and published by University Press of Colorado. This book was released on 2020-02-21 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Historicizing Fear is a historical interrogation of the use of fear as a tool to vilify and persecute groups and individuals from a global perspective, offering an unflinching look at racism, fearful framing, oppression, and marginalization across human history.The book examines fear and Othering from a historical context, providing a better understanding of how power and oppression is used in the present day. Contributors ground their work in the theory of Othering—the reductive action of labeling a person as someone who belongs to a subordinate social category defined as the Other—in relation to historical events, demonstrating that fear of the Other is universal, timeless, and interconnected. Chapters address the music of neo-Nazi white power groups, fear perpetuated through the social construct of black masculinity in a racially hegemonic society, the terror and racial cleansing in early twentieth-century Arkansas, the fear of drug-addicted Vietnam War veterans, the creation of fear by the Tang Dynasty, and more. Timely, provocative, and rigorously researched, Historicizing Fear shows how the Othering of members of different ethnic groups has been used to propagate fear and social tension, justify state violence, and prevent groups or individuals from gaining equality. Broadening the context of how fear of the Other can be used as a propaganda tool, this book will be of interest to scholars and students of history, anthropology, political science, popular culture, critical race issues, social justice, and ethnic studies, as well as the general reader concerned with the fearful framing prevalent in politics. Contributors: Quaylan Allen, Melanie Armstrong, Brecht De Smet, Kirsten Dyck, Adam C. Fong, Jeff Johnson, Łukasz Kamieński, Guy Lancaster, Henry Santos Metcalf, Julie M. Powell, Jelle Versieren
Download or read book The Fear Problem written by Dr Patrick Lockwood and published by Mascot Books. This book was released on 2018-10-02 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Shape of Fear written by Susan Jennifer Navarette and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2014-07-11 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the last decades of the nineteenth century, Charles Darwin, Thomas Henry Huxley, Walter Pater and others changed the nature of thought concerning the human body and the physical environment that had shaped it. In response, the 1890s saw the publication of a series of remarkable literary works that had their genesis in the intense scientific and aesthetic activity of those preceding decades -- texts that emphasized themes of degeneration and were themselves stylistically decompositive, with language both a surrogate for physical deformity and a source of anxiety. Susan J. Navarette examines the ways in which scientific and cultural concerns of late nineteenth-century England are coded in the horror literature of the period. By contextualizing the structural, stylistic, and thematic systems developed by writers seeking to reenact textually the entropic forces they perceived in the natural world, Navarette reconstructs the late Victorian mentalité. She analyzes aesthetic responses to trends in contemporary science and explores horror writers' use of scientific methodologies to support their perception that a long-awaited period of cultural decline had begun. In her analysis of the classics Turn of the Screw and Heart of Darkness, Navarette shows how James and Conrad made artistic use of earlier "scientific" readings of the body. She also considers works by lesser-known authors Walter de la Mare, Vernon Lee, and Arthur Machen, who produced fin de siècle stories that took the form of "hybrid literary monstrosities." To underscore the fascination with bodily decay and deformation that these writers explored, The Shape of Fear is enhanced with prints and line drawings by Victor Hugo, James Ensor, and other artists of the day. This elegantly written book formulates a new canon of late Victorian fiction that will intrigue scholars of literature and cultural history.
Download or read book Neighborhood of Fear written by Kyle Riismandel and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2020-11-24 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How—haunted by the idea that their suburban homes were under siege—the second generation of suburban residents expanded spatial control and cultural authority through a strategy of productive victimization. The explosive growth of American suburbs following World War II promised not only a new place to live but a new way of life, one away from the crime and crowds of the city. Yet, by the 1970s, the expected security of suburban life gave way to a sense of endangerment. Perceived, and sometimes material, threats from burglars, kidnappers, mallrats, toxic waste, and even the occult challenged assumptions about safe streets, pristine parks, and the sanctity of the home itself. In Neighborhood of Fear, Kyle Riismandel examines how suburbanites responded to this crisis by attempting to take control of the landscape and reaffirm their cultural authority. An increasing sense of criminal and environmental threats, Riismandel explains, coincided with the rise of cable television, VCRs, Dungeons & Dragons, and video games, rendering the suburban household susceptible to moral corruption and physical danger. Terrified in almost equal measure by heavy metal music, the Love Canal disaster, and the supposed kidnapping epidemic implied by the abduction of Adam Walsh, residents installed alarm systems, patrolled neighborhoods, built gated communities, cried "Not in my backyard!," and set strict boundaries on behavior within their homes. Riismandel explains how this movement toward self-protection reaffirmed the primacy of suburban family values and expanded their parochial power while further marginalizing cities and communities of color, a process that facilitated and was facilitated by the politics of the Reagan revolution and New Right. A novel look at how Americans imagined, traversed, and regulated suburban space in the last quarter of the twentieth century, Neighborhood of Fear shows how the preferences of the suburban middle class became central to the cultural values of the nation and fueled the continued growth of suburban political power.
Download or read book Rehabilitating Inerrancy in a Culture of Fear written by Carlos R. Bovell and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2012-02-20 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The notion that the Bible is inerrant in everything it teaches is something those with conservative upbringings are conditioned to take for granted. However, after being exposed to scholarship in biblical studies and other disciplines, some draw the unexpected conclusion that inerrancy as a doctrine is in dire need of serious revamping. Unfortunately, inerrantist politics and culture are making the constructive, restorative process impossible to intitiate. In Rehabilitating Inerrancy in a Culture of Fear, Carlos Bovell offers a synoptic overview of the issues to be addressed if inerrancy is to survive as a viable bibliological option.
