Barry Glassner - Culture of Fear: Why Americans are Afraid of the Wrong Things
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- Book:Culture of Fear: Why Americans are Afraid of the Wrong Things
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Culture of Fear: Why Americans are Afraid of the Wrong Things: summary, description and annotation
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In the age of 9/11, the Iraq War, financial collapse, and Amber Alerts, our society is defined by fear. So its not surprising that three out of four Americans say they feel more fearful today then they did twenty years ago. But are we living in exceptionally dangerous times? In The Culture of Fear, sociologist Barry Glassner demonstrates that it is our perception of danger that has increased, not the actual level of risk. Glassner exposes the people and organizations that manipulate our perceptions and profit from our fears, including advocacy groups that raise money by exaggerating the preva. Read more...
Abstract: In the age of 9/11, the Iraq War, financial collapse, and Amber Alerts, our society is defined by fear. So its not surprising that three out of four Americans say they feel more fearful today then they did twenty years ago. But are we living in exceptionally dangerous times? In The Culture of Fear, sociologist Barry Glassner demonstrates that it is our perception of danger that has increased, not the actual level of risk. Glassner exposes the people and organizations that manipulate our perceptions and profit from our fears, including advocacy groups that raise money by exaggerating the preva
Abstract: In the age of 9/11, the Iraq War, financial collapse, and Amber Alerts, our society is defined by fear. So its not surprising that three out of four Americans say they feel more fearful today then they did twenty years ago. But are we living in exceptionally dangerous times? In The Culture of Fear, sociologist Barry Glassner demonstrates that it is our perception of danger that has increased, not the actual level of risk. Glassner exposes the people and organizations that manipulate our perceptions and profit from our fears, including advocacy groups that raise money by exaggerating the preva
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
During the many years in which I planned, researched, wrote, rewrote, and expanded this book, my wife, Betsy Amster, endured more than any spouse ought. She had to put up with weekends in which I scarcely left my study, abbreviated vacations, and newspapers and magazines cut up before she had a chance to read them. Yet whenever I completed a draft of a chapter Betsy took time away from her schedule to identify the flaws in my arguments and offer her expert editorial advice.
I am also especially grateful to my agent, Geri Thoma, for her unfaltering friendship and support. Over time, editors and publishers at Basic Books both encouraged and supported me: Tim Bartlett, whose astute queries and suggestions improved the original book greatly, and John Sherer and Tim Sullivan, whose work was invaluable in bringing out this tenth anniversary edition.
Early on, Wendy DeBoer, a doctoral student at the University of Southern California and primary research assistant on the project, helped me find and organize thousands of news stories, television transcripts, and research studies. Special thanks go as well to my friend Morty Schapiro, my faculty colleagues in the Department of Sociology at USC, and Provost C. L. Max Nikias.
Conversations with numerous other friends, colleagues, and editors educated me and helped me sort out my positions on the topics discussed in these pages. In particular I would like to acknowledge Amy Aronson, Cynthia Fuchs Epstein, Howard Epstein, Steve Fraser, Jonathan Glassner, Judith Grant, Martha Harris, Rosanna Hertz, Sue Horton, Darnell Hunt, Michael Kimmel, Julia Loughlin, Tom Lutz, Morgan Lyons, Mauricio Mazon, Jonathan Moreno, Peter Nardi, Richard Popkin, Hank Rubin, Lillian Rubin, Hilary Schor, David Shaw, Arlene Skolnick, Jerry Skolnick, Gary Taubes, Barrie Thorne, and Alan Wolfe.
READER DISCUSSION GUIDE
About the Author
Professor of Sociology at the University of Southern California, Barry Glassner is the author of seven books on contemporary social issues, including The Gospel of Food and Bodies. He was previously chairman of the sociological departments at Syracuse University and the University of Connecticut. His articles and reviews have appeared in newspapers and journals throughout the United States and abroad, including the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Wall StreetJournal,the Chicago Tribune, and the London Review of Books. He has also published research studies in the American Sociological Review, American Journal of Psychiatry, and other leading social-science journals. In addition to being extensively quoted and profiled in dozens of newspapers and magazines, he has appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Today Show, Good Morning America, Nightline, and other television programs, as well as programs on CNN, CNBC, and MSNBC, and National Public Radio.
Professor Glassners honors include an Outstanding Book of the Year award from Choice magazine and a visiting fellowship at Oxford University. The Culture of Fear was named a Best Book of the Year by the Los Angeles Times Book Review and KnightRidder newspapers and has been hailed by reviewers everywhere. The book and Glassner himself are featured in Michael Moores film, Bowling for Columbine.
About the Book
When first published in 1999, The Culture of Fear was greeted with admiration and outspoken appreciationadmiration for Professor Glassners extensive and deep research and appreciation for his calling attention to the false fears that sap the time, energy, and money of all Americans and to the real problems and dangers that face us all. Numerous awards, author appearances, quotations, and references later, the book has taken on renewed significance with its being featured, along with its author, in Michael Moores prize-winning film, Bowlingfor Columbine. With each passing year since its publication, the books central theme has become more salient and more relevant to our lives.
Glassners eye-opening examination of the pathology of fear that affects all segments of our society reveals why Americans are overburdened with overblown fears and why those fears continue to be publicized by special-interest individuals and groups. He exposes the people and organizations that manipulate our anxieties and our views of and responses to life as it really isnt, and who benefit from that manipulation. Politicians win elections by exaggerating concerns about crime and drug use when, in fact, both are in decline. Advocacy groups raise money by inflating the prevalence of specificand phantomdiseases. Newspapers and television news programs monger new scares on a regular basis in order to gain ratings or increase sales.
Why, Glassner inquires, are so many fears in the air, and so many of them unfounded? The simple answer is the immense power and money that await those who tap into our moral insecurities and supply us with symbolic substitutes. By identifying the actual fear mongers among us, their methods, and their motivations, Glassner aims to shift our attention to the realities that do endanger us, individually and communally, and to ways of dealing with those realities. We waste tens of billions of dollars and person-hours every year on largely mythical hazards, Glassner asserts; and those dollars and hours could be easily redirected to effective programs rather than enervating scares.
There has never been a time in modern American history when so many people have feared so much. Glassner demonstrates, chapter after chapter, that it is our manipulated perception of danger that has increased, not actual dangers themselves. This vast market in trepidation can and should be replaced by programs and measures focused on correcting the true, if unpopular and unpleasant, causes of our problems. We need to learn how to identify exaggerated or false fears from legitimate ones, Glassner has insisted. We need to be able to distinguish between isolated events and rumors, on the one hand, and real problems and dangers on the other hand. The Culture of Fear goes a long way in helping us to make the correct distinctions and to identify the true dangers.
For Discussion
1. Glassner begins his book with the double question, Why are so many fears in the air, and so many of them unfounded? (xix) How does he answer those questions? What specific fears does he cite as unfounded or exaggerated, and what explanations does he put forward? What fears strike you as particularly pervasive and without factual basis? How would you explain them?
2. Why do specific fears, and fear in general, seem to play such a critical role in contemporary life? What purposessocial, political, psychological, and othermight be served by the promulgation of and belief in specific fears and threats, however unfounded, misreported, or overstated they may be?
3. What potential dangers, hardships, and costs does Glassner associate with the inflated, exaggerated, unfounded, false, and overdrawn fears that he identifies? What can be done to allay or prevent those dangers, hardships, and costs? Which of Glassners pseudodangers and scare campaigns do you consider the most important or the most threatening to the well-being, stability, and improvement of individuals, communities, and American society overall, including your own well-being? Why?
4. In Glassners view, what organizations, groups, and individuals promote and profit from scares (xxxi), and in what ways do they profit? What are some of the ways by which these fear profiteers create and spread unfounded and exaggerated fears? How might they be dissuaded from doing so?
5. In what ways does what Glassner calls psychoblather (7) contribute to the continuation of unreasonable and unfounded public fears, and to an inaccurate view of the actions of individuals and groups and of the consequences of those actions? What might replace psychoblather in relation to the analysis of public scares?
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