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Frank Furedi
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Frank Furedi
Frank Furedi (Hungarian: Füredi Ferenc; born 3 May 1947) is a Hungarian-Canadian academic and emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Kent. He has studied the sociology of fear, education, therapy culture, sociology of knowledge, and what he calls "paranoid parenting".
Furedi's family emigrated from Hungary to Canada after the failed 1956 uprising, and he completed a bachelor's degree in international relations at McGill University. He has lived in Britain since 1969. He completed an MA in African politics at the School of Oriental and African Studies,[non-primary source needed] and received a PhD from the University of Kent in 1987 with a thesis on the Mau Mau Uprising in Kenya.
A former student radical, he became involved in left-wing politics in Britain in the 1970s, in particular, as a member of the International Socialists (IS), under the pseudonym Frank Richards. He and others were expelled from the IS in 1973 and formed the Revolutionary Communist Group, then in 1976, he and his followers were expelled from this group and formed the Revolutionary Communist Tendency, refounded in 1978 as the Revolutionary Communist Party.
The RCP was distinguished by its contrarianism, commitment to theoretical elaboration and hostility to state intervention in social life. Key positions for the party were involvement in anti-imperialist politics, including removal of British troops in Northern Ireland and opposition to the Gulf War.
In December 1990, the RCP's magazine Living Marxism ran an article by Furedi, entitled "Midnight in the Century", which argued that the corrosive effect of the collapse of both Stalinism and reformism on the working class meant that "for the time being at least, the working class has no political existence". This signalled a re-orientation of the party towards more libertarian positions, its formal dissolution by the end of the decade, and the founding of the website Spiked Online with which Furedi is now associated.[citation needed]
Furedi's academic work was initially devoted to a study of imperialism and race relations. His books on the subject include The Mau Mau War in Perspective, The New Ideology of Imperialism and The Silent War: Imperialism and the Changing Perception of Race. In recent years his work has been oriented towards exploring the sociology of risk and low expectations. Furedi is author of several books on this topic, most recently Wasted: Why Education Isn't Educating (Continuum 2009) and Invitation to Terror: The Expanding Empire of the Unknown (Continuum 2007), an analysis of the impact of terrorism post 9/11. His more recent publications, On Tolerance: A Defence of Moral Independence (Continuum 2011) and Authority: A Sociological Introduction (Cambridge University Press) deal with the inter-related problem of freedom and authority.
He was, according to research from 2005, the most widely cited sociologist in the UK press. Furedi frequently appears in the media, expressing his view that Western societies have become obsessed with risk. He writes regularly for Spiked. He has also written several books on the subject of risk, offering a counterpoint to the analyses of Anthony Giddens and Ulrich Beck, including Paranoid Parenting, Therapy Culture, and Culture of Fear.
Notable PhD students he has supervised include Munira Mirza.
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Frank Furedi
Frank Furedi (Hungarian: Füredi Ferenc; born 3 May 1947) is a Hungarian-Canadian academic and emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Kent. He has studied the sociology of fear, education, therapy culture, sociology of knowledge, and what he calls "paranoid parenting".
Furedi's family emigrated from Hungary to Canada after the failed 1956 uprising, and he completed a bachelor's degree in international relations at McGill University. He has lived in Britain since 1969. He completed an MA in African politics at the School of Oriental and African Studies,[non-primary source needed] and received a PhD from the University of Kent in 1987 with a thesis on the Mau Mau Uprising in Kenya.
A former student radical, he became involved in left-wing politics in Britain in the 1970s, in particular, as a member of the International Socialists (IS), under the pseudonym Frank Richards. He and others were expelled from the IS in 1973 and formed the Revolutionary Communist Group, then in 1976, he and his followers were expelled from this group and formed the Revolutionary Communist Tendency, refounded in 1978 as the Revolutionary Communist Party.
The RCP was distinguished by its contrarianism, commitment to theoretical elaboration and hostility to state intervention in social life. Key positions for the party were involvement in anti-imperialist politics, including removal of British troops in Northern Ireland and opposition to the Gulf War.
In December 1990, the RCP's magazine Living Marxism ran an article by Furedi, entitled "Midnight in the Century", which argued that the corrosive effect of the collapse of both Stalinism and reformism on the working class meant that "for the time being at least, the working class has no political existence". This signalled a re-orientation of the party towards more libertarian positions, its formal dissolution by the end of the decade, and the founding of the website Spiked Online with which Furedi is now associated.[citation needed]
Furedi's academic work was initially devoted to a study of imperialism and race relations. His books on the subject include The Mau Mau War in Perspective, The New Ideology of Imperialism and The Silent War: Imperialism and the Changing Perception of Race. In recent years his work has been oriented towards exploring the sociology of risk and low expectations. Furedi is author of several books on this topic, most recently Wasted: Why Education Isn't Educating (Continuum 2009) and Invitation to Terror: The Expanding Empire of the Unknown (Continuum 2007), an analysis of the impact of terrorism post 9/11. His more recent publications, On Tolerance: A Defence of Moral Independence (Continuum 2011) and Authority: A Sociological Introduction (Cambridge University Press) deal with the inter-related problem of freedom and authority.
He was, according to research from 2005, the most widely cited sociologist in the UK press. Furedi frequently appears in the media, expressing his view that Western societies have become obsessed with risk. He writes regularly for Spiked. He has also written several books on the subject of risk, offering a counterpoint to the analyses of Anthony Giddens and Ulrich Beck, including Paranoid Parenting, Therapy Culture, and Culture of Fear.
Notable PhD students he has supervised include Munira Mirza.
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