polity
First published in German as Gesellschaft der Angst © Hamburger Edition HIS Verlagsges. mbH, Hamburg, Germany, 2014. This translation from German is published by arrangement with Hamburger Edition.
This English edition © Polity Press, 2018
The translation of this work was supported by a grant from the Goethe-Institut.
P. vi: excerpt from “The Waste Land” from T.S. Eliot, Collected Poems 1909–1962. Reprinted throughout world excluding the US in print format and the world in ebook format by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd. Reprinted in print format in the US by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved. Copyright 1936 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Copyright © renewed 1964 by Thomas Stearns Eliot.
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ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-1953-8
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I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
T. S. Eliot
If we want to understand a social situation, we must give a voice to people’s experiences. The public today is inundated with data on poverty risk rates, the dissolution of the middle class, the increase in depressive disorders, and declining turnout among first-time voters. But what these findings mean and how they relate to one another remains unclear.
There is no question that changes are brewing in the correlation between social structures and individual attitudes. Cognitive psychologists, behavioral economists, and neurophysiologists are therefore turning their attention to the black box of the self, which now has to mediate between these dimensions without the benefit of traditional paradigms or conventional models. The self-help books that are based on their research tout mental activation programs and physical relaxation techniques.
Sociology can play its hand here if it takes itself seriously as an experiential science. Experience is the source of evidence for empirical research and personal life praxis alike. This experience manifests itself in discourse and is based on constructs. But the point of reference for analyzing blog posts, newspaper articles, medical bulletins, or opinion polls must be the experiences that are expressed within them.
One important empirical concept in society today is the concept of fear. In this context, fear refers to what people feel, what is important to them, what they hope for, and what drives them to despair. Fears reveal the direction in which a society is moving, where the flash points are, when certain groups will mentally withdraw, and how doomsday sentiments or resentment can suddenly proliferate. Fear shows us what’s wrong with us. Sociologists who want to understand society today must look to the society of fear.
I would like to thank Birgit Otte, who had the idea for this book, and Sabine Lammers, who edited the text with a steady hand.
Thank you to my wife, Karin Wieland, who saved me from fixed ideas, as always, and to my daughter, Pola, with whom I discussed the major ideas on our shared streetcar journeys.
Heinz Bude, June 2014