(Name Withdrawn)
Soc 101
A. Jones
December 6, 2007 Fear: America’s Reality
“Explanation lay not in a lack of intelligence…but in the social conditions at the time.” -
Barry Glassner
A major view in the sociological world is Marxism. Marxism is a view of society
that describes society's way of living and thinking that is allegedly derived from the
social elites that rule the country and the lower social classes being oppressed and
exploited. The book The Culture of Fear describes how Americans are afraid of certain
social problems in the United States and how the issues become problems. The mass
media plays a large part in what the American society thinks, believes, does and
concerns. The main purpose of his book is to debunk these fears that are instilled in the
American society and directly point out the origins of these fears.
Glassner’s argument in his book The Culture of Fear is essentially the idea that
the American society, as a whole, has fears without reasonable causation. The media
plays a major part in putting these different fears into the minds of society. If society
sees something in the mass media or in the news Glassner says that “We judge how
common or important a phenomenon is by how readily is tomes to mind. We are likely
to give top billing to whatever the media emphasizes at the moment, because that issue
instantly comes to mind” (Glassner 133). This means that if a new disease breaks out
like SARS did years back; people will be more paranoid and show signs of anxiety and
even go to the extreme to diagnose them with the disease. The disease is on their mind
all the time, however if they wouldn’t of broadcasted it on television, there is a good
chance the person would not of have known about it in the first place. This is where
