The Road to Ukraine and How the West Lost its Way with Frank Furedi

Frank Furedi is a sociologist and social commentator. He is
Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Kent in
Canterbury.


His most recent book is “The Road to Ukraine: How the West Lost
its Way.”


Since the late 1990s, Frank has been widely cited about his views
on why Western societies find it so difficult to engage with risk
and uncertainty. He has published widely about controversies
relating to issues such as health, parenting children, food and
new technology. His book Invitation To Terror; Expanding the
Empire of the Unknown (2007) explores the way in which the threat
of terrorism has become amplified through the ascendancy of
precautionary thinking. It develops the arguments contained in
two previous books, Culture of Fear (2002) and Paranoid Parenting
(2001). Both of these works investigate the interaction between
risk consciousness and perceptions of fear, trust relations and
social capital in contemporary society.


Frank has also written extensively about issues to do with
education and cultural life. His book, Wasted: Why Education Is
Not Educating (2009) deals with the influence of the erosion of
adult authority on schooling. On Tolerance (2011) offers a
restatement of the importance of this concept for an open
society. Authority: A Sociological History (2013) examines how
the modern world has become far more comfortable with questioning
authority than with affirming it.