Fear and Loathing in the New Century

Fear and loathing are two powerful themes in politics, popular media, and everyday life. Fear of crime, environmental disaster, job loss, child abuse, terrorism, and more, is becoming increasingly more pervasive in our society. We are familiar with the changing physical, legal and social environments, which are part of the ′stepping up′ of security measures involving increased policing and surveillance in a range of institutions and organizations. As a result in society today we have new figures to fear and loathe - ′the terrorist′, ′the paedophile′, ′the illegal immigrant′. These deviant social types are physically close to us even as they are socially distant - they live apparently ordinary lives in neighbourhoods alongside ′respectable citizens′ Fear and Loathing in the New Century is a special issue of the Journal of Sociology and confronts several dimensions of fear and loathing. Fear and loathing have long been the reserve of social psychologists but the contributors to this publication encourage a sociological investigation of these concepts examining, for example, the social characteristics of the fearful, the social contexts in which fear emerges, the social construction of fear as a key emotion, the relationship between fear and social control, and the ways in which people manage fear. This is a timely publication seeking to analyse this social phenomenon.