"America Looks Hopelessly Broke", "The Whole Liberal Democracy is in Grave Danger", "Expect to lose money", "Worried about Crowded Planes?","Espionage", Theft" "Brazen Killing", "Wasps in the Backyard" and "Teenagers at the end of the world"..."God help us".
These are just a few random headlines and key words from one critically acclaimed, liberal American newspaper. Go to conservative news outlets and you will discover what Frank Furedi (2019) calls "competitive scaremongering."
The Culture of Fear, a concept developed in the 1990s by Furedi and Glassner originally described how fear and culture had become so intertwined that a fatalistic view of the world became the dominant cultural narrative, highly visible and perpetuated in the media, but also in everyday cultural practices: by Americans' reliance on guns and lawyers practicing libel law. It went beyond the End-of-the Millennium angst and the fear of the Y2K Bug.
Those fears normally lessen at the beginning of a new century.
But then came 9/11, global warming, Trump, the Pandemic...
"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself" (FDR, 1933)?
This course aims to examine the complex mechanisms of how fear is produced by culture. When possible, we may expand our American focus transnationally to include Britain or even Germany. Once we have uncovered the reasons for such a Culture of Fear, we will - hopefully - be able to put fear in its right place.
- Dozent/in: Anette Brauer