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Fear is not, contrary to Thomas Hobbes, inherent to human nature. Fear must be taught, it must be learned, it must be produced. How else are we to know who is friend and who is foe, whom we are and are not? Still, the production of fear is no easy matter, and on it rests much more than individual survival. On fear rests authority. On fear rests economy. On fear rests power. In this paper, we explore how fear is produced through a political economy of threats and sold to the American public. We do not contend that there are no hazards in life, some of them quite deadly, or that people’s malevolent feelings and intentions are imaginary. We do claim, however, that threats have neither content nor significance until they are invested with meaning that draws on both the familiar and the alien. There are many threats, but turning them into a fear that can be consumed amounts to more than dissemination of intelligence or a calculation of risk. We propose that, only through a careful examination of the ways language, social relations, and material things are combined into a finished package of danger can the production of fear be understood not as warning but as the creation of terrified and terrorized populations seeking protection from the very state that produces those fears. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Foreign policy analysts, citizens, and policymakers have become increasingly aware that a nation?s international image is an important factor in determining how effective it might be in pursuing global endeavors. In the specific case of the United States, Robert Wright notes how ?several forces have converged to create a new truth: national security depends crucially on foreign feelings towards the United States" (Wright, 2006:28). This concern has prompted an upsurge in scholarship that studies the U. S. image in the world, notably in books by Sweig (2006), Kohut and Stokes (2006), and Rusciano (2006), which attempt to explain why this nation?s image has declined internationally since 2000.This paper attempts to take a different approach to the issue of Fremdbild, or the manner in which a nation is perceived in other countries. Rather than tracing the rise or decline of the United States? image over time, it attempts to discover the factors that go into the construction of this image in other countries. This study uses the Pew Global surveys of 44 different nations from 2004 to trace the components of the U. S.?s international image. It discovers that there are three factors that affect how other nations view the United States: (1) their opinions on American culture, in terms of music and film, business practices, and political ideals; (2) their opinions on U. S. military hegemony in the world; and (3) their general opinions about whether they ?like? Americans, and the United States as a nation.The paper then moves on to construct a model of the relations among these three factors. The study also tests whether the model varies among different regions of the world. Finally, the project tests whether this model holds in other global surveys conducted by the Pew Research group; this analysis will attempt to find whether the three factors have different weights in affecting the overall image of the United States over time. The paper concludes by arguing these preliminary steps towards deconstructing a nation?s global image are not just useful in international public relations, but might just provide some lessons about the type of behavior that can promote admiration or approbation for a nation in the international realm.ReferencesWright, Robert. ?They Hate us, They Really Hate Us.? The New York Times Book Review. 14 May 2006. P. 28.Sweig, Julia E. Friendly Fire: Losing Friends and Making Enemies in the Anti-American Century. Washington: A Council on Foreign Affairs Book. 2006.Kohut, Andrew and Stokes, Bruce. America Against the World: How We Are Different and Why We Are Disliked. New York: Times Books/Henry Holt and Company. 2006.Rusciano, Frank Louis. Global Rage After the Cold War. New York: Palgrave. 2006. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modern liberal citizenship is a failing design, and this is nowhere more apparent than in the contemporary US. Currently there is a frenzy around US citizenship â€" who has it but shouldn’t have it, who should have it but doesn’t have it, who had it but renounced it. The sheer volume of ideas, images, and events and their mass circulation makes it almost impossible not to notice how unsettled and unsettling contemporary US citizenship has become. If, as designer Bruce Mau suggests, the success of a design is its invisibility, then it seems that the design of contemporary US citizenship is anything but a success (Mau, 2004:1). Taking seriously the claim that modern liberal citizenship is a failing design, I focus on how citizenship is designed and redesigned through history. My central research question is â€" What are the design principles of modern liberal citizenship, and how are they experienced in the contemporary US? Noting that modern liberal citizenship emerged from state security debates and that security concerns preoccupy those in the contemporary US, I investigate not only how citizenship is designed but how safe citizenship is designed. As such, I am less concerned with the legal definition of citizenship than with the practical packaging of citizenship as part of a design for safe living. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]