Wednesday 4 April 2007 The only thing we have to fear is the ‘culture of fear’ itself NEW ESSAY: How human thought and action are being stifled by a regime of uncertainty. Frank Furedi Fear plays a key role in twenty-first century consciousness. Increasingly, we seem to engage with various issues through a narrative of fear. You could see this trend emerging and taking hold in the last century, which was frequently described as an ‘Age of Anxiety’ (1). But in recent decades, it has become more and better defined, as specific fears have been cultivated. The rise of catchphrases such as the ‘politics of fear’, ‘fear of crime’ and ‘fear of the future’ is testimony to the cultural significance of fear today. Many of us seem to make sense of our experiences through the narrative of fear. Fear is not simply associated with high-profile catastrophic threats such as terrorist attacks, global warming, AIDS or a potential flu pandemic; rather, as many academics have pointed out, there are also the ‘quiet fears’ of everyday life. According to Phil Hubbard, in his 2003 essay ‘Fear and loathing at the multiplex: everyday anxiety in the post-industrial city’, ambient fear ‘saturates the social spaces of everyday life’ (2). Brian Massumi echoes this view with his concept of ‘low-grade fear’ (3). In recent years, questions about fear and anxiety have been raised in relation to a wide variety of issues: the ascendancy of risk consciousness (4), fear of the urban environment (5), fear of crime (6), fear of the Other (7), the amplification of fear through the media (8), fear as a distinct discourse (9), the impact of fear on law (10), the relationship between fear and politics (11), fear as a ‘culture’ (12), and the question of whether fear constitutes a ‘distinctive cultural form’ (13). Fear is often examined in relation to specific issues; it is rarely considered as a sociological problem in its own right. As Elemer Hankiss argues, the role of fear is ‘much neglected in the social sciences’. He says that fear has received ‘serious attention in philosophy, theology and psychiatry, less in anthropology and social psychology, and least of all in sociology’ (14). This under-theorisation of fear can be seen in the ever-expanding literature on risk. Though sometimes used as a synonym for risk, fear is treated as an afterthought in today’s risk literature; the focus tends to remain on risk theory rather than on an interrogation of fear itself. Indeed, in sociological debate fear seems to have become the invisible companion to debates about risk. And yet, it is widely acknowledged by risk theorists that fear and risk are closely related. As Deborah Lupton notes in her 1999 book Risk, risk ‘has come to stand as one of the focal points of feelings of fear, anxiety and uncertainty’ (15). Stanley Cohen makes a similar point in Folk Devils and Moral Panics, published in 2002, where he argues that ‘reflections on risk are now absorbed into a wider culture of insecurity, victimization and fear’ (16). A study of New Labour’s economic policies argues that they are couched in the ‘language of change, fear and risk’ (17). The terms ‘fear’ and ‘risk’ have been used pretty much interchangeably in many studies of risk in recent years. Yet where the sociology of risk has become an important and ever-growing field of inquiry, the theorisation of fear remains underdeveloped and immature. Norbert Elias has made perhaps the most significant contribution to the sociological study of fear. In his 1982 book The Civilising Process Vol 2: State Formation and Civilization, Elias argued that fear is one of the most important mechanisms through which ‘the structures of society are transmitted to individual psychological functions’. He argued that the ‘civilized character’ is partly constructed by people’s internalisation of fears. This is a striking and important insight into the history of fear and society (18). Unfortunately, Elias’ insights have not been developed in relation to the contemporary experience of fear. Indeed, today writers and thinkers tend to use the term 1