Fear and Contemporary History: A Review Essay

Peter N. Stearns

Journal of Social History, Volume 40, Number 2, Winter 2006, pp. 477-484
(Review)

Published by Oxford University Press

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/jsh.2007.0033

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/208386

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FEAR AND CONTEMPORARY HISTORY: A REVIEW ESSAY

By Peter N. Stearns

A number of books in recent years, including an important new entry by Joanna

Bourke, have pointed to significant changes in American and/or modern fears,
in ways that cry out for historical assessment. The very bulk of the work, most
of it launched before 9/11 though sometimes finetuned in the aftermath of this
massive emotional spur, suggests that something new is going on—that is, that
there is a significant shift underway in contemporary emotional history. A num-
ber of studies explicitly claim that fear has become the predominant emotion in
contemporary life—and that this is a significant change. Yet relatively little of
the recent scholarship is explicitly historical, and this essay, while lauding the
scholarly trend itself, intends to suggest what a somewhat more rigorous histor-
ical approach might yield.1
It’s worth remembering at the outset that a major historian dealt elaborately
with fear a generation ago, and while his work focused on premodern centuries
in Western Europe, he did have some suggestions about contemporary contrasts
and echoes that might be recalled with profit. In several books, Jean Delumeau
powerfully illuminated the role of fear in European Catholic societies from the
early days of Christianity, though more particularly from the late Middle Ages,
into the 18th century.2 Fears of death and of damnation were powerful reali-
ties, used as disciplinary tools for children and adults alike. They added to other
inescapable factors, like periodic famines or military depredations, to create a
context of emotional anxiety. Widespread beliefs in witchcraft, alternatively
combated and sanctioned by the Church, added to the climate, while also—
through white magic or attacks on witches—suggesting some positive means of
alleviating insecurity. Delumeau argued that cultural changes in the 17th and
18th century, that replaced religious fearfulness with a more positive vision of
earthly progress, dramatically altered the traditional emotional climate. But he
goes on to note, without exploring the topic elaborately, that fear would return
in the 20th century, based now not on religion but on the realization of the
unseen forces of deterioration and death that operated within the human body,
now that degenerative disease began to replace contagion as the main source of
mortality. Obviously, most current analysts would argue that contemporary fear
has exceeded the bounds of new patterns of disease, but Delumeau’s insights,
and his sense of historical dynamic, remain relevant.
Some subsequent work might be used, for the United States at least, to modify
Delumeau’s findings in certain respects. A battle against religious fear was waged
in the United States in the early 19th century, with the debates over original sin;
and while mainstream Protestantism began vigorously to oppose the use of fear
in childrearing, an ongoing Evangelical minority thought otherwise, complicat-
ing the emotional landscape in later American history. American Catholicism
continued to preach fear until the reform era of the 1960s, when it did indeed
definitively shift gears.3 But it is also true that, in the 19th and 20th centuries,
478 journal of social history winter 2006
growing opposition to fear emerged, indeed a rising optimism that, in a well-
ordered society, fear might be banished altogether.
Thus G.T.W. Patrick, in 1913:

“Fear is the greatest source of human suffering. Until comparatively recent times
nature has been something unknown and the unknown has been a constant source
of terror. It is believed to be full of supernatural and possibly hostile agencies.
Devils and demons and indignant deities, an angry and jealous God, possible future
and retributive punishments, earthquakes and eclipses, all have contributed to
make the life of man miserable. This burden of woe has now been lifted. Another
view of nature now prevails. Man has cast off fear and finds himself master of nature
and perhaps of all her forces, while in religion the gospel of love is casting out the
dread monster of fear. But it is not alone fear of supernatural agencies that we have
escaped, but also fear of political upheavals connected with despotic governments
and social instability. Few of us appreciate the profound security that we now enjoy,
security of life, property and reputation.”4

While optimism of this extreme sort may have been shortlived, hit hard by the
war that opened in the following year, it did not disappear. In behaviorist psy-
chology, for example, with its claims that humankind possessed very few innate
fears and that carefully organized childrearing could produce fear-free individ-
uals, some of the same hopefulness resurfaced. The belief, or at least the hope,
that modern life and fear could part company remained an important element
in American culture, trumpeted further of course by FDR himself in his most
memorable phrase.
Obviously, however, this strain in contemporary American or Western cul-
ture has been largely eclipsed in recent decades—though the prior existence
of hopes for freedom from fear may have exaggerated contemporary response,
both popular and scholarly, to the realization that fear is with us still. And the
rediscovery of fear, though it embraces anxieties about death and degenerative
disease, goes beyond Delumeau’s suggested contemporary paradigm as well.
Several recent studies of fear rest primarily in the sphere of intellectual his-
tory or political philosophy. They are interesting as they add to the impression
of a revived emotion, but they are somewhat peripheral to the understanding
of fear as a wider social phenomenon. Thus Judith Shklar argues that liberalism
has turned away from its resounding commitment to generalized statements of
rights, and particularly natural rights, that come to be seen as unduly abstract,
and toward a fearful defensive stance against the encroachments of arbitrary
governments. This liberalism of fear involves a sense of political embattlement,
rather than real emotion, but it does suggest how the vocabulary of fear is pen-
etrating a growing range of discourse.5
In a more recent work still, Corey Robin picks up the argument about the
political uses of fear, looking at American leadership rather generally, beyond
purely liberal ranks.6 He sees fear being employed in absence of any inspiring
alternatives from any of the major political camps, at least in the United States.
Corey devotes most of his book to the place of fear in Western political theory,
from Hobbes onward, as a springboard for analysis of the use of fear in American
race relations and labor disputes. He offers sweeping comments on why fear and
anxiety have come to figure so prominently in American political messages from
REVIEW ESSAY 479
both left and right. He deals less with popular reception of these messages, but
the impression is clear: fear from the top is being increasingly used to motivate
political decisions, and the process is new—at least to this extent—and decid-
edly troubling. Robin certainly blasts conservatives who distract from real social
problems by invocations of fear, but with Shklar he does not locate the approach
with conservatism alone, but with a broader shift in the political process.
The main sociological entry in the new fear literature, and it is an impor-
tant one, is the 1999 book by Gary Glassner, The Culture of Fear. Focused on
the United States, and strongly implying without comparatively demonstrating
that Americans have developed some unusual, and unusually counterproduc-
tive, fears, the book has two emphases. Both emphases suggest innovation in
American fear patterns during the final two decades of the 20th century, but
there is no explicit effort to establish a status quo ante historical baseline. Glass-
ner first of all considers the causes of new fears, suggesting two possibilities—the
apocalyptic sentiment that built up in advance of the new millennium and me-
dia manipulation—and largely eliminates the former. Media pandering becomes
the key villain of the piece. The bulk of the book then turns to the targets of
new fears and how needless and misplaced they are—at the same time accurately
depicting the consequences of unwarranted fears in bad policies, excessive ex-
pense, and neglect of more legitimate issues and opportunities. This list here
is considerable, and Glassner does a splendid job of contrasting fear-soaked per-
ception and sober reality. Thus: Americans fear levels of crime that do not exist,
even when actual crime rates are falling, because of media portrayals. They worry
about child abduction (as Paula Fass has also noted) or teenage gambling when
both are extremely rare, again because journalists so often tell them that youth
are at far greater risk than adults realize. They are anxious about African Ameri-
can men fairly generally, again on the basis of exaggerated incidents and outright
misperceptions. They make huge mistakes about the likelihood of certain feared
diseases.7
Fear, here, is largely cognitive; Glassner does not spend much time on emo-
tion as a construct. But however deeply emotional, the fear he describes adds up
to a frankly incontrovertible pair of points: Americans have become wretched
calculators of real risk because they are so often misled and manipulated by me-
dia and politicians who profit from their anxieties. And the mistakes are not
harmless: they lead to acceptance of policies that are frequently as misdirected
as the fears themselves—for example, withdrawing kids from public schools de-
spite their normal and considerable safety. They lead also to great expense. And
they lead quite generally to the widespread impression, particularly vivid when
children are involved, that the environment has become steadily less safe in
recent decades, compared to some largely mythologized past.
Glassner spends no time on the historical question of when this all began, and
how great the change has been. He assumes Americans used to be more sensible,
before the media developed their evil ways, but he’s not interested in proving
this explicitly. Nor, by the same token, does he really explore media change—
why did the media somehow become more interested in scaring Americans and
more able to do so? The neglect of historical issues actually raises questions about
causation as well. Again, Glassner has done a splendid job, but there is clearly
more to the story.
480 journal of social history winter 2006
This approach is also characteristic of another important entry, by Frank
Füredi.8 Dealing with modern Western societies more generally, Füredi also po-
sits a growing aversion to risk and a corresponding deterioration in moral cli-
mate. Again, fear-mongering media come in for heavy blame, and Füeredi coins
the felicitous term, “fear entrepreneurs”. Füredi goes a bit farther than Glass-
ner in positing actual increases in health effects—for example, a growing rate
of phobias—which is a truly important extension. Here too, however, there is a
good bit of fogginess on the historical baseline: when and to what extent were
phobias less common, and to what extent is the impression based on solid data
rather than changes in diagnosis (themselves interesting, but rather a different
matter)? Furedi also adds some interesting high-culture evidence, which Glass-
ner does not treat: thus The Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art mounts an
exhibit on the “perils of modern living” while an Art Bienniel in France, more
to the point, offers as its theme the “art of fear.” There’s a strong impression here
of change—and certainly Füredi’s work combined with others creates a power-
ful sense that something is happening with fear in recent decades—but exactly
what, in terms of historical analysis, remains slightly elusive.
Which is why another, more recent book, though also launched before 9/11, is
particularly interesting, because it does dip deeply into historical data and claims
historicity directly. Joanna Bourke’s study shares best of show with Glassner’s
work in the current fear parade. No question here of the main theme: fear has
become “the most pervasive emotion of modern society.” (ix) While the main
emphasis is on all the terrifying events and developments of the 20th century—
new killing techniques, nightmares and phobias, “treacherous bodies”—Bourke
also cites interesting 19th-century fears, such as the literary fascination with be-
ing buried alive. Strong emphasis applies to changes in the fear of death. Bourke
picks up the frequent lack of great concern about death expressed early in the
20th century (including the abrupt cessation of the burial-alive motif) and con-
trasts this with fears that have developed since, echoing Delumeau in citing the
terror potential of unseen bacteria and degenerative processes. Disasters form a
second, related theme, from massive theater fires in the early 20th century on-
ward. Fears concerning children gain appropriate attention, from fear-wielding
servants in the 19th century who used the emotion as a disciplinary technique
to the growing worries about children’s fears in the 1920s. Here, as with death,
evidence comes from literary sources, prescriptive manuals, and (for the 20th
century) the contributions of psychologists. The same package ushers in the
discussion of nightmares and phobias, which thanks to psychology receive new,
scientific attention from the late 19th century onward; the discussion of phobias
encompases the various, often drastic treatments imposed, including lobotomies
and electric shock treatments, as the 20th century unfolded.
The later portions of the book deal more with social expressions of fear. A fas-
cinating chapter describes a British radio broadcast in 1926, which sowed wide
panic over the possibility of invasion, and relates this to Orson Welles’ later
bombshell about Martian attack. Excellent chapters focus on the evolution of
the interpretation of soldiers’ fears during wars, with emphasis on the two World
Wars; on British civilian experience in World War II (which of course was not
always as fear-drenched as one might have expected); and on the development
and maintenance of fears of nuclear conflict. Chapter 10 returns to more indi-
REVIEW ESSAY 481
vidual fears, of cancer and AIDs and the renewed experience of prolonged death.
Both pollution and the new fears of crime from strangers draw comment. And
the final chapter deals with the rising fears of terrorism and how they relate to
the other fears discussed.9
This is a rich, provocative work, immensely erudite and drawing on materials
from an impressive range of sources. There are, however, three issues, which in
my view invite additional historical analysis. The first and most fundamental in-
volves the nature and extent of change. Except to a small extent for death, there
is no clear establishment of a baseline—presumably, some time in the mid-19th
century—from which the evolution of 20th century fears can be traced. In sev-
eral chapters, comment ranges widely from the later 19th through the mid-20th
century. To be sure, it might be assumed that the obviously unprecedented expe-
rience of world war and nuclear threat require no explicit assessment of novelty;
but on other fears—around children, for example, or phobias—one really does
wonder about the extent to which modern society is really different from its pre-
decessors. Of course there is distinctive commentary, thanks particularly to the
rise of psychology, but the extent of experiential change is simply an unknown.
Opportunities even to probe 19th century literary comment on nightmares or
phobias are not taken. The result: an extremely persuasive case that change has
occurred but some real fuzziness about the precise nature of the shift. After all,
the proposition must be confronted: do not all societies fear, admittedly with
changing specific targets: so what is provably different about the modern case?
The second issue involves causation. Bourke’s study is cultural but without
the cloying apparatus of postmodernism, so she does not indulge in the fashion-
able, but baffling, attack on the idea of seeking causes for change. But she doesn’t
provide much explicit analysis either. Again, the new nature of war undoubtedly
helps explain new types and levels of fear. But Bourke invokes war late, seeing
the emotional consequences in many ways as extensions of novel fears that had
already developed in other arenas. To the extent that modern fears are different
from those of the past, around children for example, or disease, why is this so?
Bourke provides a great deal of food for thought, around new issues such as can-
cer and war, and around new perspectives such as psychology; but not, I think,
totally satisfactory, focused answers.
And finally there’s the question of geography. This is a comfortably Anglo-
American book, moving easily from one side of the Atlantic to the other. With
the obvious exception of civilians in wartime, there’s no sense of any distinc-
tion between the two societies treated. But nor is there any systematic testing
of comparative propositions. Here, it risks being churlish to ask for more than is
provided. But we do emerge with a third question: is fear the dominant modern
emotion around the world? In Western society primarily? In Anglo-American
quarters as distinct from the rest of the Western world? These questions are deep-
ened by another recent work, by Christophe Lambert,10 that argues that fear has
become an overriding political emotion in contemporary France. In his hands,
this fear is more predictable than with Bourke: the French fear immigration,
globalization, ageing, the panoply of forces that seem to threaten a cherished
but now beleaguered way of life. But are there wider connections? The invita-
tion to more explicit comparative analysis is both obvious and urgent—granting
the difficulties of the task.
482 journal of social history winter 2006
And a final, intriguing though often frustrating, recent entry.11 Jackie Orr’s
book on panic refers to some of the same materials as does Bourke, though the
focus is resolutely American: the early mention of an early 20th-century Chicago
fire as an entry point to contemporary panic; extensive treatment of the Welles
broadcast and the studies of ensuing fear; many references to the rise of scien-
tific studies of trauma and panic—including many military research projects on
psychosomatic disorders—here going well beyond Bourke in this important spe-
cific field. Add to this a number of highly personalized touches, reflecting the
author’s fascination with certain types of mental disorder, and with drug treat-
ments such as Xanax, and a few literary productions by psychiatric patients, and
again the result is a highly plausible sense of increasing panic in an undefined
but presumably growing segment of the American population. Science to be sure
invented new terms in the process, such as panic disorder (and Orr offers an im-
portant history here, complete with abundant references), but this intellectual
shift was attached to a very real experiential change. And here the causation
is quite clear: the psychic pressures of terrifying new technologies, particularly
military technologies. A major segment of the book deals with nuclear testing
and nuclear threats and the connections to studies and experiences of mental
disorder.
Yet, even more than with Bourke, despite a clear historical interest and his-
torical apparatus that among other things involves specific chapter-to-chapter
chronologies, there’s an acute sense of basic historical issues overlooked. What
Orr covers is undeniable and important—but is it, cybertechnological causation
aside, fundamentally new? Have contemporary fears merely used new stimuli to
revive older basic fears that were once attached, say, to supernatural forces or (to
reference the Great Fear of the French Revolution) evil landlords? What about
the importance of hysteria in the 19th century (a malady which as Orr notes
virtually ended in the 20th century and has been historically studied)?12 Is the
history of fear a history of fundamental change—which is what all the recent
scholarship one way or another wishes to suggest—or a history of a psychosocial
constant which however responds to new factors and emerges in new combina-
tions? Either possibility is significant, but the distinction is vital as well, if we
are truly to probe emotions history and through this to understand fundamental
aspects of our own age.
In sum: anyone concerned with contemporary society or contemporary Amer-
ican society with some sense of historical perspective has to be deeply interested
in the widespread impression that fear is becoming a newly-dominant emotion.
Certainly, in a culture deeply devoted to emotional control in areas such as
anger, grief or jealousy, fear seems to have escaped standard boundaries, which
may well add to its inherently disturbing impact. But there is also, despite the
volume of recent work, an invitation to further analysis: to discuss more pre-
cisely the process of change against a more definitely established historical base-
line and against the proposition that all societies fear; to pursue a more clearly
comparative approach, toward sorting out what if anything is American, vs.
Western, vs. modern; and to deal more clearly with causation.13 The division
between scholars who attribute change simply to the media, and those who find
new fear a response to more fundamental features of contemporary life, has to
be mediated by more analytical studies. Quite possibly, media manipulation does
REVIEW ESSAY 483
increase but only because popular emotional culture has already changed in ways
that increase susceptibility.
Finally, there is the question of consequences. Historical research on changes
in emotional culture argues for three levels of results, in ascending order of com-
plexity. I would contend that this typology can be applied to recent shifts in fear.
First, new standards, and possibly new emotional experience, leads to changes in
the way people evaluate their own and others’ emotions. In this case, willingness
to talk openly of fears, and hesitation to criticize the fears of others as excessive,
have both measurably increased in the past half-century, with both personal
and political consequences. Second, change should affect relevant policies: as
at least suggestive evidence, the contrast between a presidential administration
eager to urge that fear should be feared, and one insistent on developing color
codes to signal how much fear should be generated, certainly warrants consid-
eration. Media willingness to use fear openly, in contrast to advertising policies
through the first two thirds of the 20th century that urged against evoking fear,
is another change that both signals and promote a broader emotional evolution.
This is the area as well where Glassner and other appropriately probe the policy
distortions that result from heightened and arguably mistargeted fears.14
Then, as the third type of consequence, some changes in “actual” emotional
experience should emerge—with an understanding the evidence here, in past
and present alike, is particularly challenging. Not surprisingly, pinpointing
change in this category has proved to be a tough assignment, though there
are several approaches. Scholars who write about media vulnerability are some-
times a bit vague on how much actual emotion is aroused—as opposed to more
purely cognitive confusion—but they imply some shift that then affects reac-
tions. Those dealing with emotion and emotional disorder more directly, and
particularly Bourke and Orr, make more explicit claims, though as noted the
historical underpinnings need considerable work (including fuller use of estab-
lished findings on premodern and even 19th-century experience) before we can
be fully confident in the conclusions.
But it would be misleading to end on too doubting a note. Recent work is
impressive, making an excellent case for significant changes in fear and fear’s
role from a number of standpoints. The scholarship points as well to the trou-
bling features of these changes, in the quality of personal emotional life and in
the impact on political and personal decisions. What also needs discussion, pre-
cisely because this scholarly surge is so persuasive, is whether there are possible
remedies—whether media can be called to account, whether the fearful features
of contemporary life can be somewhat tamed. Here too, in noting that what re-
cent changes can also (in principle) be further changed or redirected, historians
should participate in the discussion.

ENDNOTES
1. In interest of full disclosure, I also have a book on fear about to appear—American
Fear: the causes and consequences of high anxiety—where I try to deal with some, though
not all, of the issues raised in this essay.
484 journal of social history winter 2006
2. The main studies are Jean Delumeau, Péché et la peur: la cuplabilisation en Occident
entre XIIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Paris, 1983)—translated as Sin and Fear (New York, 1991);
and Peur en Occident, XIVe–XVIIIe siècles: une cité assiégée (Paris, 1978).

3. Timothy Kelly and Joseph Kelly, “American Catholics and the Discourse of Fear,”
in Peter N. Stearns and Jan Lewis, eds., An Emotional History of the United States (New
York, 1998), 259–82.
4. G.T.W. Patrick, “The New Optimism,” Popular Science Monthly 82 (May, 1913):
492–503; see also Basil King, The Conquest of Fear (New York, 1921). Cited in James
Farrell, Inventing the American Way of Death (Philadelphia, 1980), who properly notes
the link between this new attack on fear and the belief that death could be relegated to
old age.

5. Judith Shklar, Political Thought and Political Thinkers (Chicago, 1998).

6. Corey Robin, Fear: The History of a Political Idea (New York, 2004).

7. Barry Glassner, The Culture of Fear: Why Americans are Afraid of the Wrong Things
(New York, 1999).
8. Frank Füredi, Culture of Fear: risk-taking and the morality of low expectations (rev. ed.,
London, 2002).
9. Joanna Bourke, Fear: a cultural history (Emeryville, CA, 2006).

10. Christophe Lambert, La Société de la peur (Paris, 2005).

11. Jackie Orr, Panic Diaries: a genealogy of panic disorder (Durham, NC, 2006).

12. Edward Shorter, “Paralysis: the rise and fall of a ‘hysterical’ symptom,” in P. Stearns,
ed., Expanding the Past (New York, 1988), 215–50.

13. The bulk of the references to fear as the dominant modern execution remain western
at most, though there are casual global claims. But Muslim scholars, like Tariq Ramadan,
have written about pervasive Islamic fear of attacks or belittlement (and of defensive
Israel’s fear as well). The issue of comparative geographical scope warrants attention, as
well as more precisely the kinds and degrees of fear prevalent in different places.
14. Stearns, American Fear.