The Culture of Fear

Khadijah Ahmed

Mr. Roddy

IHSS

September 22, 2021


The Culture of Fear


“The Culture of Fear: Why Americans are Afraid of the Wrong Things”, by sociologist Barry Glassner, is an illuminating examination of the typical American brain, and really how many irrational fears it has. It reveals the number of sources and organizations that perpetuate, and profit off of these fears. While he does go a little into the psychology of it all, he also provides numerous examples. One of these is the typical parental fear of a child being kidnapped. Based on actual reports conducted by the OJP, the majority of missing children are runaways fleeing from abusive households. Most of the remaining missing children, are in fact, rejected from their own parents, and have been cast out of their household. Despite these statistics, three out of four American parents still report fear that their child will be kidnapped. One of the reasons he pins this on is misleading marketing from corporations. Every year, an estimated 57 million postcards are mailed out to households, the headline reading, “Have you seen me?” attached to the face of a missing child on the front, with the postcards’ advertisement for a company on the back. The question is, why would corporations limit information, and while this is of course an important issue in the US, seemingly inflates the American eye? And it is revealed that at the root of numerous issues in this country including this one, is capitalism. Advertising companies want to profit more, and corporations based around finding missing children want to, of course, spread the word around. This issue, while it is still a considered issue in the United States, is among one of the many inflated fears in the American public. 


https://news.usc.edu/8743/A-Sociologist-Explores-the-Culture-of-Fear/

https://www.fatherly.com/parenting/are-american-parents-unreasonably-afraid-of-abduction/


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Cultural Anthropology blog

 India Riley Mr.Roddy IHSS September 2, 2021 Anthropology blog     My article was about wildfires. All across the Mediterranean fires are increasingly becoming larger, and more dangerous. This could be due to many different causes, the most likely is human inflicted. Because of climate change the chances of a fire have significantly increased. While farming is practical and beneficial for food, most farming strategies have become more harmful than good for our environment. The chemical pesticides and fertilizers are extremely flammable, with just one spark the entire field could burst into flame within minutes. When dedicating a large amount of land to farmland or cattle range, its safe to assume that at some point that will be engulfed in a fire. Rarely a field could emerge to flames even if a human hasn't touched it, because plants release so much oxygen, too much of any sort of plant could combust to flames during drought seasons or lightning storms significantly...
Read more

Prisoner of The Infidels

  Niko Cantu Mr. Rodey IHSS 21 October 2021 Prisoner of The Infidels 1）Osman’s writing is far more modern than other writings from his time. It has a very direct and straightforward structure and its translation to English is paractly identical to modern English writing. An example of this direct writing was when Osman said “From this, I understood God's will,namly, that my master had no intention of ever granting me freedom”. This sentence for one use I as he refers to himself in the first person, which was not very common during that time.   2) Osman is clearly very connected to his Muslim religon and repedidly mentions Allah throughou the story. A clear example of this use is when he says “I have no money, and no one is going to help me because of Allah''. This is a clear example of how SOman instinctively believes that Allah may not have an effect on his current situation, he thinks of Allah as a part of his daily life.  3) A discussion that Osman had to make was...
Read more

IHSS reading Prisoner of the Infidels Ira Williams

  Ira Williams Mr.Roddy October 27, 2021 IHSS IHSS reading Prisoner of the Infidels Pick a section to note the style of his writing.  How would you characterize it? The writing was very descriptive and rough at the same time, it made you see and picture the things he was going through and realize how bad it was. It was very humbling to read how he was beaten and imprisoned in a cell with his hand and feet shackled, on his stomach too. What role does his religion play in his thinking?  Give an example. He was very risky in what he did because he had is divine wisdom and foresight to guide him, as well as Allah to fall back on . one instance of this is when he “saw” people surrounding the city and so he slid along a frozen lake to another town, where he hid in a barrel. What is a decision that he had to make?  Do you think it was a good one? Why or why not? When he left his old master, I think that he should have stayed, he was treated pretty well, even was given some ...
Read more