INTERVIEW The Politics of Furedi

RANK FUREDI is Professor of Sociology at All the Intellectuals Gone?, made an impassioned Fthe University of Kent, in Canterbury, England. case against the dumbing down of our culture He was born in Hungary in 1948, but his family and argued for a revitalisation of what he calls the emigrated to Canada following the 1956 uprising. public sphere. And in his latest offering, Politics He moved to Britain in the 1970s where he founded of Fear, he bemoans the spread of fatalism about the Revolutionary Communist Party and wrote for the future (he is particularly scathing about Green the magazine Living Marxism. His early academic fear-mongering) and the loss of political faith in writings focussed on issues of race, imperialism and humanity’s ability to progress. To challenge this Third World development. fatalism, he recently set up a ‘Manifesto Club’ in His politics (and his sociology) are today England to encourage young intellectuals of varying much harder to pigeonhole. He describes himself political persuasions to come together and rebuild a as a humanist, and his writings emphasise the common commitment to Enlightenment values. importance of acknowledging human capability. In Frank Furedi spoke at the CIS Consilium in books like Therapy Culture and Paranoid Parenting August 2005, and his essay on anti-religious hysteria he shows how we are increasingly encouraged to appeared in the Autumn 2006 issue of Policy. When think of ourselves as vulnerable and to rely on he re-visited Australia in April, CIS’s Social Policy ‘experts’ rather than having the confidence to Director, Peter Saunders took the opportunity to organise our own lives. His 2004 book, Where Have interview him.

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Peter Saunders: You have written a number of books collapses, a few hundred workers may be killed, but if which on the face of it appear very eclectic in their a nuclear power station melts down, a whole country themes—therapy culture, parenting, the decline of can disappear. Does this help explain the fear and risk the intellectuals, the culture of fear. What is your basic aversion in modern culture? agenda? What is it that underpins all this writing? FF: But this is the appearance, not the reality. Take Frank Furedi: Well it developed in a haphazard way. I Chernobyl because it’s a very good example. They use it wasn’t really sure what it was but I knew I was struggling all the time, that and BSE, as defi ning paradigms. I don’t with the same thing all the time. It’s to do with this know if you saw it, but a few months ago a study came idea I developed in the most recent book [Politics of out on Chernobyl that ran to several volumes. In The Fear], which is about personhood. How we view what a Guardian it got four lines. But the news was really, really person is—the human attributes and cultural attributes good. The news was that fewer people died in Chernobyl that we give to people. I think my concern with fear than in a train crash in England. It showed that contrary is really a concern with the way we tend to represent to all the fears about congenital deformities, that didn’t people as weak and vulnerable and lacking in agency, happen. Sperm counts that were supposed to disappear lacking in the capacity to control their destiny. Not only didn’t fall. All this pollution they were worried about that, but we also stigmatise many of those attributes didn’t occur. The news was absolutely good. Basically it which are important for a resilient, robust individual. was an industrial accident. And yet to this day we think of Chernobyl as the defi ning moment of that period. PS: In what ways do we stigmatise resilience? They [Giddens and Beck] argue we live in an age of ‘manufactured risk’. But when push comes to shove, FF: These days human aspiration to realise the ideal it’s still Hurricane Katrina, it’s still the Asian tsunami, of individual autonomy is dismissed as a grotesque it’s still these kinds of things that are really testing us. myth. The attempt to exercise self control or indeed Of course things are now more interdependent, but individual control over one’s life is caricatured as a that interdependence is as much a source of potential disease of perfectionism. Statements like ‘I can take solutions as it is of disruption. So although it appears to it’ or ‘I can do it’ are stigmatised as the products of be the case we’re far more vulnerable, that’s the dominant an outdated macho culture. In contrast we are always paradigm, but in reality we’re potentially much more encouraged to ‘acknowledge our weaknesses,’ we are resilient in dealing with these things. incited to worry about stress and emotional pain. We are even too weak to work hard. Terms like ‘long-hours PS: So if the objective risks are no greater than in the culture’ and ‘work-life balance’ are used to underline past, why is it we are so much more fearful of them? just how much we suffer from work. FF: I think the reason is that in previous times, there were one or two fears that defi ned humanity, so in We are always encouraged to the nineteenth century it was fear of death, or fear of 'acknowledge our weaknesses', we poverty, and in the twentieth century it was fear of are incited to worry about stress and unemployment in the thirties, or fear of nuclear war in emotional pain. the fi fties. These were fears that bound communities together, we feared them together, more or less. But I think what has happened now is that we no longer have a common narrative of fear that defi nes any particular Fear and loathing fear community because fears have become so promiscuous PS: The concern with risk aversion is a key focus in and so detached from any dominant concerns. So it your work. You explicitly criticise people like Beck could be the avian fl u or childhood obesity or illness, it and Giddens who have been central to the sociological could be 101 different things. Our fears are much more discussion of risk, but isn’t there some truth in their fragmented and atomised than was the case before. And basic hypothesis that if something does go wrong in the these are the kinds of fears we suffer from, rather than the modern world, the potential scale of the catastrophe is kind we do something about. This is why we’ve allowed so much greater, which is why they say we are right to a much more free-fl oating fear to dominate us. be more cautious? It’s the argument that, if a coal mine

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PS: Why has fear become so promiscuous? Is it just for a very long time. It’s only now when everything global communications making us much more aware else has lost meaning that we’re confronted with a of all the threats happening in the world? problem. People have talked about loss of religion and its meaning systems for a very long time. It’s only now FF: It relates to what I talk about in my last book, it’s got this particularly poignant consequence to it. the redefi nition of personhood. As we become much more preoccupied with our vulnerability, as we lose Engaging the public sphere agency, and reduce the meaning of humanity, and PS: Sociology has always had the question of human lower our potential, so the way we imagine we can agency at its core, hasn’t it? Do you see your work as handle risks and problems also alters. Instead of tapping into this key theme of western sociology over emphasising our coping capacity, we emphasise our the last 150 years—the concern with individual agency disabilities in dealing with these things, and that’s and meaning in the modern world? the key thing. Because of that, fear then acquires an autonomy that’s quite detached from any objective FF: I think it does, but this is precisely at a time when element. If you look at the mission statement of any sociology has become estranged from the idea of police force you’ll fi nd them talking about the fear agency. My work is an attempt, I suppose, to explore of crime being as important as crime itself. If you how human agency can still mean something in read their documents they say they spend 50% of contemporary times, and particularly I’m concerned their time fi ghting fear of crime and the rest of the with its loss. Not only its loss, but the fact that people time fi ghting real crime (in other words, reassuring aren’t particularly worried that it’s no longer there as a people). It’s the same with terrorism where we make dimension in their lives. the point that fear of terrorism is a much greater problem than terrorism. Or with medicine, where PS: Your message is very optimistic in that you insist fear of cancer and fear of chronic diseases is now a we actually have a lot of capacity to deal with problems medical speciality that has to be dealt with separately that we think we are powerless in the face of. That’s a from anything objective. So what’s happened is message I can relate to when it comes to individuals— we have the autonomisation of fears. In legalistic that we can and should take more control of our lives. terms what’s happened is a revolution in the legal But you seem also to be applying it to governments. framework. In some states in America, California Reading your last book you seem to be saying that we and Texas for example, the kinds of things you can also need to rediscover our faith in government? sue for because you fear them have increased—not things that have actually happened, but because you FF: Not really, no. I want us to have more faith in, and fear that that industrial plant may pollute you. In give more energy to, creating a public life, where people some courts that has become actionable. These are can have more discussion and engage with each other the kind of changes that have occurred which then critically to deal with things. Also I think we need a change our fear calculations. greater sense of purpose and meaning in public and political affairs than is the case at the moment. But PS: In a sense the ultimate fear is the fear of death, I’m much more banking on people working out their which is made fearful when death has no meaning informal ways of interacting than looking for formal due to the decline of religion. So is your work going institutional solutions. I’m open-minded about the to end up back with that great existential question ideal form of government at the moment. I think that’s of how are we to make sense of our lives now that too premature, because I think whatever the ideal form God is dead? of government that appears in the future, it will depend upon the political culture that exists in society—how FF: Not necessarily because since the decline of critical it is and what expectations we have. religion we’ve had belief in science that can move people, or belief in communism, or socialism, PS: But what’s so good about the public sphere? It political liberalism or fascism, all sorts of other comes through clearly in your work that you want to things can come along. Religion has been in decline revitalise the civic sphere, but why is this important?

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In a world of affl uence where I can assert my own because of the exercise of power without purpose—in autonomy, I don’t really need to engage with the public this case, American power without purpose. Power sphere as much as I did 50 years ago to get the things becomes very arbitrary and can lead in all sorts of bizarre I need in order to lead a fulfi lling life. So why do we directions that are not necessarily helpful. So you can need to reenergise the public sphere? Why not just let have a situation where the most powerful nation in the it wither? world half the time appears entirely powerless, and that’s because it doesn’t really know what it’s doing. FF: Well, it’s not really surprising that Muslim kids are reacting the way they are if there’s no sense of meaning PS: The US says it has a purpose, doesn’t it? It’s the or purpose in the broad things that we are doing. The spread of liberal democratic values. thing that binds us together as people isn’t simply self- interest, but also the fact that we have a common story FF: I really don’t think that’s something they’re really that we’re trying to clarify, we have common issues that enthusiastic about. It’s got a rhetorical purpose to it. If we should be discussing, and through that whole process it really had a commitment to that, then it would be we become much more able to deal with the issues that much more robust in pursuing that domestically, never we face. What I fi nd quite depressing is that in many mind anywhere else. I think it’s a real diffi culty that we western societies they’re very prosperous, but there’s an fl oat from one arbitrary issue to the next. In England you intense level of atomism and fragmentation amongst can have an election campaign that’s entirely dominated people and we rarely communicate in a spontaneous by the issue of school dinners for a few days, and then way with each other. Because of that we end up in a next day it’s something else equally trivial that captures situation where, because we haven’t got an educated or the public for a few days. a thriving public sphere, aspects of our lives that ought to be organised on a more informal principle become PS: But the issue of school dinners may be trivial to you increasingly professionalised and are gradually taken out and me, but to many members of the public they may of our hands. That’s really what I’m concerned about. In not be trivial. Aren’t you just bemoaning the demise of fact, in almost everything that I’m writing at the moment ‘high politics’? I come back to this question of formality and informality. For example, as a university teacher you notice that your FF: Possibly, but if these issues were really important to relationship with your students is now a contractual the public, they’d remember them a week later rather one rather than an informal one, and that means the than simply lose sight of them. Very often the ‘big issues’ academic relationship alters altogether, it becomes like in politics are of no interest to human beings. The way a school teacher and school pupil relationship. politicians have politicised health and education, most people aren’t that concerned with it, it’s primarily the PS: Nevertheless, also in your writing you bemoan the political oligarchy that is preoccupied with it. When fact that we’re all so skeptical of politics and politicians, you have a public that is so atomised, you have this so when you say you want to reenergise the public sphere, new oligarchy emerging, which is quite frightening. it isn’t just in terms of cooperative self-activity, but you’re One of the things that’s going on in Britain with all also saying we ought to be more engaged with formal this stuff about money for peerages is that the parties politics as well, not just informal politics. are not political parties any more, they are oligarchies maintained by a small group of staff members who FF: Yes, well obviously I think if you have a more engaged realise the only way they can survive is to tap into public, then they will pay greater attention to the kind fi nance. What this demonstrates is the death of the of government policies that are being enacted in their parties. It’s not the parties that will sustain these people, name, and they will make their views and desires known but their fi nancial network that will keep them going. in a more coherent way than is the case at the moment. That’s true of the Tories as well. So what you now have What I’m really concerned about is that public life has to is an oligarchical network, like in the eighteenth century. have some kind of purpose, otherwise without purpose it It spreads from a few NGO activists to the journalists becomes very confusing and arbitrary. Many of the big and all the way to the fi nancial backers, and includes problems in the world today, like the war in Iraq, are just a few individuals.

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Left, right and straight ahead. FF: You have individuals who say these things, but they PS: You’ve got a lovely quote in your latest book where don’t really represent any serious force in society. The you say ‘the right has given up the past and the left has people who run our institutions may well have their own given up the future.’ Can you explain what you mean opinions and prejudices, but when it comes to policy- by that? making they establish this institutional perspective.

FF: In many ways the best thing about the right was it PS: But wouldn’t the welfare state still be a touchstone had a sense of tradition. It had traditional values that it of left-right differences? As you say, the left has become stood up for and thought it was important to maintain conservative, and one of the things it’s conservative and not to lose sight of. And it insisted history was very about is defending the twentieth century welfare state. important and you couldn’t just forget the past, that it lived on in some shape or form. But now what happens FF: I think most of the mainstream left-wing politicians is conservative theorists are arguing you give up the old are much more ambivalent about the welfare state and baggage of tradition, and you modernise, and you get are much more open to doing things than they were. lightweight conservatism that is almost as estranged from The right say they want to cut the welfare state, but they the past as everyone else is. So they give up the past. At the are quite happy to extend what I call the ‘therapeutic state.’ You've got a lovely quote in your latest book where you say 'the right has PS: What do you mean by the ‘therapeutic state’, and given up the past and the left has in what ways does the right extend it? given up the future.' FF: The therapeutic state is in the business of giving same time the left—the best thing about the left was its people ‘recognition’ through policies of ‘inclusion’. It optimism about the future, that things would get better involves the expansion of counselling, social services like and better—but the left now regards the future with Sure Start programmes, and emotional education. It gets dread, at its worst regards the future as this apocalyptic used by politicians to establish new points of contact environmental nightmare where things go from bad to with an otherwise fragmented and atomised public. worse. So what the left does is it becomes very ‘presentist’ where it says the present is the best of all possible worlds. PS: Perhaps the paternalistic right embraces these things, This is very conservative. Perversely more conservative but there’s also a libertarian right, isn’t there? than the conservatives, because at least some conservatives do want to move on. So you have a political milieu that FF: But they’re handfuls of individuals. You can say desperately wants to hold on to the present. The way there are individuals who are genuinely libertarian, but I experience this is, every time I make any criticism of I probably know most of them! They are individuals anything, I’m told ‘You’re harping back to a Golden who self-consciously adopt labels. I’m not talking about Age.’ I try to say, ‘I’m not, just because you question the individuals, but a movement. The reason I think we present doesn’t mean you want to go back to something, need to get rid of the labels is we need to bring together it may be that you want the future to be different from people who are slightly more Enlightenment oriented, the present.’ But the future is just off the radar. regardless of whether they are religious or atheists, right or left, to work together to address this problem, because PS: You say ‘left’ and ‘right’ have lost any meaning in at the moment they have more in common, regardless contemporary politics, but surely there still are quite big of what their inclinations are, than the differences that philosophical issues that divide right and left, in particular divide them. around this issue of agency that we have already talked about. Isn’t it still the case that the left will tend to look to PS: What exactly do they have in common? Is it any the agency of the state and state power to solve collective more than just an interest in politics? problems whereas the right will tend to put more faith in individual self-determination? FF: What we have in common is not just that we’re

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political. It’s also a kind of belief in the necessity for PS: It sounds like you’re re-creating university seminars! some humanistic advances to be upheld, to celebrate and It’s like what Oxbridge seminars used to be. promote some of the gains of Western civilisation rather than simply dismiss them with embarrassment. The FF: Possibly, but on a much grander scale. I just want legacy of the Enlightenment is there for everybody—the to let people run with it and see how far they can go. belief in the idea of progress, for example, and in human I’ve no idea what will come out of that, but if you can advancement. have more people run with these ideas, and bring them together, and they maybe develop some ideas of their PS: Doesn’t belief in progress rule out conservatives? own, then maybe something will come out of that, or maybe not. FF: No, most conservatives I know recognise that at least in the Renaissance sense some form of progress is possible PS: On your web site you attack ‘facile pundits, think- for mankind. A common belief in experimentation, risk- tank apologists and spin doctors’ and your latest book taking, all these are things from the Enlightenment attacks the ‘oligarchy of elites’ that is disconnected with period that we need to re-appropriate. I’m not saying the public and preoccupied with the media. All of that we just reclaim it and repeat what was said 300 years interested me, working in a think-tank! Is it your view ago, but there’s a lot there that needs to be developed that places like CIS are part of the problem rather than for the future. I’m not sure what will come out of that, part of the solution? but the more we do to develop the cultural signifi cance of that legacy, the more we create the conditions where FF: I think most think-tanks, they have these guys a more enlightened public climate can emerge. think ‘What’s the next big idea?’ and they write it down on the back of an envelope and they invent something. A forum for thought They work in a marketplace so there’s short-termism; PS: This is what your new ‘Manifesto Club’ is intended they just trumpet the latest big idea. I’m very dismissive to do—can you say something about that? of them because they are in a privileged position. They could use their resources for some long-term thinking. FF: Well basically, often what happens, people write to At least politicians have an excuse. They have to come me and say what can we do? Certainly in England you up with something tomorrow. notice there are huge groups of individuals—I mean, I sometimes go to meetings where there are 600 people PS: But universities are meant to do long-term there, and they’re all very similar kinds of people, all thinking. There’s 140 of them funded in Britain. So people 24 to 35, university educated, who are hungry if there’s no long-term thinking going on, aren’t they for ideas and also know there is more to life than what the ones to blame? they’re getting. They’re often a little bit anti-PC, they haven’t really bought into all the environmental bullshit, FF: Well, universities should do that as well. There are and it’s really an attempt to involve them in something some think-tanks, like yours here, which I think do a that can create a different kind of cultural infl uence in reasonably good job in terms of going against the grain terms of the kinds of discussions you have, the kind of and providing a forum for alternative ideas. But other attitudes and values you’re encouraging. That’s really think-tanks have lost their way. what it’s all about. The way I do that is to let people decide for themselves what their Manifesto Club will A sociologist’s stock be. PS: Most sociologists are left-wing, and when I worked PS: So this is a decentralised organisation? in British academic sociology, I found it more and more diffi cult to do my work after I moved away FF: Yes, it’s totally decentralised. Hopefully what we’ll from a left perspective. You started out life on the left, do [at the launch conference] in November is just agree and wherever you are now you’re clearly very critical on some very basic principles that can bind us together of left orthodoxy. So I wonder how British sociology and then see what develops. relates to you?

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FF: Well it’s perverse. I was never part of the Labour that, I think I’d be really nailed to the wall as a left and I always had a lot of problems with the left- right-wing fascist! wing point of view as it was identifi ed. I think I’ve encountered a couple of reactions. One is the claim PS: Is it still as bad as I’m painting it in academic that my work isn’t really sociology, it’s not serious, sociology? it’s just journalism. But in the last fi ve years I’ve managed to gain a lot of authority, so that reaction FF: Yes it is, but I think with the new generation has changed, though often for the wrong reasons. coming though it’s much more forgiving. They have The British Sociological Association did a study less baggage than in the past, it’s more fl uid. of the impact of sociology on the media and they discovered that I’m the most quoted sociologist in PS: That’s a hopeful note to end on. Thank you Britain. I said ‘so what?’ but my stock has risen. very much. The way it’s risen is they call me a ‘very infl uential public sociologist’, so they pigeon-hole you in that sort of way, but it does mean they react more positively. The important thing that’s happened is my impact on young PhD students has been quite considerable. I get a constant stream of enquiries from people saying they’d like to do a PhD with me, so that’s strengthened my position. In a sense, to my surprise, my authority is much stronger than ever before, but it’s not because people agree with me, and it’s begrudging. So it hasn’t been as bad as I thought it would be, but that’s mainly because of my impact on younger people. If it wasn’t for

‘We must make the building of a free society once more an intellectual adventure, a deed of courage. If we can regain that belief in the power of ideas which was the mark of liberalism at its best, the battle is not lost.’ F. A. Hayek

On its 30th Anniversary, The Centre for financial independence of the Centre and Independent Studies established a Capital help CIS secure suitable long-term premises Campaign to create a Fund in order to support for its ‘community of scholars’. The Fund will a major development phase and underpin also help increase the Centre’s infl uence and the Centre’s long-term future. The Fund will will reinforce its role as one of the few truly allow CIS to expand and develop its research independent voices in public policy debates. programmes, and attract leading scholars to provide the ideas and resources for the ongoing For more information on the CIS Capital Campaign promotion of liberty. It will strengthen the visit www.cis.org.au or contact the Centre on (02) 9438 4377 or [email protected].

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