New Dimensions: The Growth of a Market in Fear

Abstract

Fear is one of the dominant emotions through which we imagine disaster. It also constitutes an important dimension of contemporary social reality. Public fear and anxiety play a crucial role in deliberations surrounding the environment, health, crime, children, new technologies, and recently and quite dramatically in relation to terrorism. Governments and public organizations often take the view that fear is a problem that they need to understand and manage. Today the discussion of public resilience in response to terrorism reflects this concern. Historically the imperative of maintaining public order and morale or concern about the outbreak of mass panic led governments to speculate about this problem with a view to containing it and minimizing its destructive effects. After the devastating experience of Hurricane Katrina, the problem of fear has also been “rediscovered” in relation to natural disasters.