Cultures of Fear: A Critical Reader

In Cultures of Fear, a truly world-class line up of scholars explore the formation and normalisation of fear in the context of war and terrorism.

"Freedom from fear" is a universal right and fundamental for human well-being. People often look to governments, humanitarian agencies, and other institutions to further this aim. However, this book shows that these organisations often use the same "logic of fear" to monitor, control, and contain human beings in zones of violence.

This is an excellent interdisciplinary reader for students of anthropology, sociology and politics. Contributors include Noam Chomsky, Slavoj Zizek, Jean Baudrillard, Catharine MacKinnon, Neil Smith, Cynthia Enloe, David L. Altheide, Cynthia Cockburn and Carolyn Nordstrum.

Uli Linke is Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Rochester Institute of Technology in the US. She is the author of several books including German Bodies (1999), Blood and Nation (1999), and Denying Biology (1996). Danielle Taana Smith is an Assistant Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at RIT.