Panic

by Keith Tester

Impending environmental catastrophe, threat of terrorism, viruses both biological and virtual, there seem to be so many reasons to panic today. But what is panic and why does it happen?This book uses a range of literature from sociology, cultural studies and popular psychology to develop an original analysis of panic in contemporary social life. Bringing together academic literature from a range of disciplines, films, novels and current affairs, it encourages thought about why and how we panic - both individually and collectively. Keith Tester explores how cataclysmic events and smaller-scale episodes expose the fragility of our relationships, institutions and expectations. He shows how thinking about panic reveals key aspects of contemporary social, cultural and personal relationships.Panic is a highly readable and incisive introduction to the subject for students, scholars and all those who want to know what panic means and why it is important.

126 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2012

About the author

Keith Tester has been Professor of Sociology at Hull since 2008, having previously been Professor of Cultural Sociology at the University of Portsmouth. In 2010-2011 he is also Professor of Sociology at Kyung Hee University, Seoul, Korea; Visiting Professor at the Bauman Institute in the School of Sociology & Social Policy at the University of Leeds; an Honorary Member of the Thesis Eleven Centre for Cultural Sociology at LaTrobe University, Melbourne, Australia (where he has been a Distinguished Visiting Fellow); a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts; and a Research Associate of the Institute for the Study of Social Change at University College Dublin. He is also an Executive Committee member of the Histories of Violence web project at the University of Leeds.

Keith studied for his Ph.D at the University of Leeds, and the ‘book of the thesis’ – Animals and Society – was awarded the British Sociological Association Philip Abrams Memorial Prize for Best First Sole-Authored Book in 1992. Keith is on the editorial boards of The Journal of Classical Sociology, Journal of Human Rights and Thesis Eleven.

Keith’s main research interest is in thinking sociologically about the entwinement of culture and morality. For example, thanks to contemporary media we know about suffering in other parts of the world, but what do we do about it? What does this knowledge mean to us? Do the culture industries predetermine what we might know and do? His work raises these kinds of questions through the heritage of critical theory and, especially, the social thought of Zygmunt Bauman. His interest in culture has also resulted in publications on film and art.