Fear: A Cultural History

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In the United States, each day is color-coded for the level of threat; newspapers fill with gloomy news of climate crises; and the radio and TV bleat with Amber alerts, car crashes, and the war wounded. In this groundbreaking work, award-winning historian Joanna Bourke helps us understand the landscape of fear we must now navigate. Her review of the past two hundred years-from diagnosed phobias to the media's role in creating new ones-prompts strikingly original observations about the mind and worldview of the ...
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More About This Book

Overview

In the United States, each day is color-coded for the level of threat; newspapers fill with gloomy news of climate crises; and the radio and TV bleat with Amber alerts, car crashes, and the war wounded. In this groundbreaking work, award-winning historian Joanna Bourke helps us understand the landscape of fear we must now navigate. Her review of the past two hundred years-from diagnosed phobias to the media's role in creating new ones-prompts strikingly original observations about the mind and worldview of the "long twentieth century." Blending sociocultural analyses with psychology, philosophy, and popular science, this beautifully written and exhaustively researched book offers an authoritative look at one of our most powerful emotions.

About the Author:
Joanna Bourke is a professor of history at Birkbeck College

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Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly
From death and disaster to dangerous technologies, the number of things out there to fear is countless, argues British historian Bourke (An Intimate History of Killing), who surveys a pitted landscape of dread and panic over the past two centuries in this imaginative social, psychological and cultural history. She traces how what we fear changes over time as a function of broader social anxieties and stresses. In the hierarchical Britain of the early 20th century, for instance, a lower-class accent was regarded with unparalleled horror; today, no one cares. The Victorians were terrified of sudden, natural death; today, at a time when people worry about "the excessive prolongation of life after all pleasure has been removed," being killed instantly and without warning is for many the preferred way to go. For us, the most feared thing of all is the terrorist, the "equivalent to the plague of earlier times or the Satan of religion." Though Bourke performs sterling service, painstakingly picking over usually bypassed sources and materials for hidden clues as to what scares us, she indulges the fashionable fallacy that because some fears-of terrorism, for example, since 9/11-have been exaggerated and even occasionally exploited, there is therefore nothing at all to fear but, presumably, fear itself. (June) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal
Originally published in Britain, this book considers things that go bump in the night and why they scare us from a social sciences perspective. Burke (history, Birkbeck Coll., London; An Intimate History of Killing) looks at our reactions to death, disasters, nightmares, combat, and nuclear threats, both real and imagined. The author uses a half-dozen or so very effective illustrations to document her discussion, including an early drawing of a "security coffin" with a cord and bell inside in case of premature burial. There is also a cartoon vision of "Panic on the Titanic," a harrowing photograph of a woman being restrained as she is taken to be lobotomized, and a child's use of a grinning devil to render terrorism. While the title and a glance at the table of contents might suggest a broad treatment of fear among different peoples through the ages, the focus is actually limited to British and American people from the 20th century to the present. Given the events of these past 100 years, however, this well-written discussion of fear and trembling is not unwelcome. Recommended for all libraries.-Ellen D. Gilbert, Princeton, NJ Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9781593761134
  • Publisher: Counterpoint
  • Publication date: 5/28/2006
  • Pages: 512
  • Product dimensions: 6.20 (w) x 9.00 (h) x 1.90 (d)

Table of Contents

Introduction : fear 1
Afterword to the introduction : the face of fear 11
Pt. 1 Worlds of doom
Introduction 23
Ch. 1 Death 25
Ch. 2 Disasters 51
Afterword to part one : Emotionology 73
Pt. 2 Spheres of uncertainty
Introduction 79
Ch. 3 The child 81
Ch. 4 Nightmares 109
Ch. 5 Phobias 134
Afterword to part two : Psychohistory 159
Pt. 3 Whorls of irrationality
Introduction 165
Ch. 6 Social hysteria 167
Afterword to part three : fear versus anxiety 189
Pt. 4 Zones of confrontation
Introduction 195
Ch. 7 Combat 197
Ch. 8 Civilians under attack 222
Ch. 9 Nuclear threats 255
Afterword to part four : narrativity 287
Pt. 5 Realms of anxiety
Introduction 293
Ch. 10 The body 295
Ch. 11 Strangers 322
Afterword to part five : aesthesiology 353
Conclusion : terror 357
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