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Moral panic

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Preparing to burn a witch in 1544. Witch-hunts are an example of mass behavior fueled by moral panic.

A moral panic is an intense feeling expressed in a population about an issue that appears to threaten the social order.[1] According to Stanley Cohen, author of Folk Devils and Moral Panics (1972) and credited as creator of the term, a moral panic occurs when "[a] condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests".[2] Those who start the panic when they fear a threat to prevailing social or cultural values are known by researchers as moral entrepreneurs, while people who supposedly threaten the social order have been described as "folk devils".

Moral panics are in essence controversies that involve arguments and social tension and in which disagreement is difficult because the matter at its center is taboo.[3] The media have long operated as agents of moral indignation, even when they are not consciously engaged in crusading or muckraking. Simply reporting the facts can be enough to generate concern, anxiety or panic.[4]

Origins and use

The term was first used by Jock Young in reference to the public reaction to drug takers in Notting Hill,[1] but it is often attributed to his colleague Stanley Cohen with regard to reactions of the establishment to mods and rockers.

Many sociologists have pointed out the differences between definitions of a moral panic for American and British sociologists. [citation needed] Kenneth Thompson[disambiguation needed] has said that American sociologists tend to emphasize psychological factors whereas the British portray moral panics as crises of capitalism.[5]

In Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State and Law and Order (1978), Stuart Hall and his colleagues studied the reaction to the importation of the previously American phenomenon of mugging into the UK. Employing Cohen's definition of moral panic, Hall et al. theorized that the "rising crime rate equation" performs an ideological function relating to social control. Crime statistics, in Hall's view, are often manipulated for political and economic purposes. Moral panics (e.g., over mugging) could thereby be ignited to create public support for the need to "police the crisis." The media play a central role in the "social production of news" to reap the rewards of lurid crime stories.[6]

Characteristics

Moral panics have several distinct features. According to Goode and Ben-Yehuda, moral panic consists of the following characteristics:

  • Concern – There must be awareness that the behaviour of the group or category in question is likely to have a negative impact on society.
  • Hostility – Hostility towards the group in question increases, and they become "folk devils". A clear division forms between "them" and "us".
  • Consensus – Though concern does not have to be nationwide, there must be widespread acceptance that the group in question poses a very real threat to society. It is important at this stage that the "moral entrepreneurs" are vocal and the "folk devils" appear weak and disorganised.
  • Disproportionality – The action taken is disproportionate to the actual threat posed by the accused group.
  • Volatility – Moral panics are highly volatile and tend to disappear as quickly as they appeared due to a wane in public interest or news reports changing to another topic.[1]

Examples

Jewish victims of a pogrom in Ekaterinoslav in 1905

Moral panics are considered to include some persecutions of individuals or groups, such as the Red Scare, antisemitic pogroms, Stalinist purges, the witch-hunts of Renaissance Europe. Most recently, various Muslim groups claim that some actions in Western countries following the September 11 attacks affecting Arabs, Muslims, or those mistaken for them have comprised a moral panic.[7] A series of moral panics regarding Satanic ritual abuse originated in the US and spread to other English-speaking countries in the 1980s and 1990s.[8][9][10][11] In the 1990s and 2000s, there have been instances of moral panics in the UK and the US related to colloquial uses of the term pedophilia to refer to unusual crimes of abuse such as high-profile cases of child abduction and murder.[9]

Many critics of contemporary anti-prostitution activism argue that much of the current concern about human trafficking and its more general conflation with prostitution and other forms of sex work have all the hallmarks of a moral panic. They further argue that this moral panic shares much in common with the "white slavery" panic of a century earlier.[12][13][14][15] Various researchers have shown that fears of increasing crime or an increase in certain types of crime are often the cause of moral panics (Cohen, 1972; Hall et al. 1978; Goode and Ben-Yehuda 1994). Recent studies have shown that despite declining crime rates, this phenomenon continues to occur in various cultures. Japanese jurist Koichi Hamai (浜井浩一) points out how the changes in crime recording in Japan since the 1990s led to the widespread view that the crime rate is rising and that crimes are increasingly severe. This became an election issue in 2003 with a moral panic over the "collapsing safe society".[16] Some critics have pointed to moral panic as an explanation for the War on Drugs. For example a Royal Society of Arts commission concluded that "the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, ... is driven more by 'moral panic' than by a practical desire to reduce harm."[17] At various times in its history, Dungeons & Dragons (a fantasy role-playing game) has received negative publicity for alleged promotion of such practices as Satanism, witchcraft, suicide, pornography and murder. In the 1980s especially, some religious groups accused the game of encouraging interest in sorcery and the veneration of Demons.[18] Throughout the history of roleplaying games, many of these criticisms have been aimed specifically at Dungeons & Dragons, but touch on the genre of fantasy roleplaying games as a whole. It has been suggested that the recent drive to regulate video games is another instance of moral panic over the content of popular culture.[19][20][21] The industry response has been to create a self-regulatory ratings system similar to that used by the film industry.[22]

The British television show Brass Eye, written by and starring Chris Morris, attempted to satirise the public's tendency to fly into a moral panic, most notably in the episodes 'Drugs' and the special 'Paedogeddon'. In these episodes, celebrities and politicians were duped into appearing in fictional campaigns against particular social ills, thus demonstrating the tendency for both such groups towards jumping onto the bandwagon of campaigns against social problems, principally to raise their own profiles.

Criticism

Stan Cohen

In a more recent edition of Folk Devils and Moral Panics, Cohen outlines some of the criticisms that have arisen in response to moral panic theory. One of these is of the term "panic" itself, as it has connotations of irrationality and a lack of control. Cohen maintains that "panic" is a suitable term when used as an extended metaphor. Another criticism is that of disproportionality. The problem with this argument is that there is no way to measure what a proportionate reaction should be to a specific action.[23] Others[who?] have criticized Cohen's work stating that not all the folk devils expressed in his work are vulnerable or unfairly maligned.[citation needed]

Yvonne Jewkes

The British criminologist Yvonne Jewkes has also raised issue with the term 'morality', how it is accepted unproblematically in the concept of 'moral panic' and how most research into moral panics fails to approach the term critically but instead accepts it at face value.[24] Jewkes goes on to argue that the thesis and the way it has been used fails to distinguish between crimes that quite rightly offend human morality, and thus elicit a justifiable reaction, and those that demonise minorities. The public are not sufficiently gullible to keep accepting the latter and allowing themselves to be manipulated by the media and the government.[24]

Steve Hall

A critique has come from another British criminologist, Steve Hall, who argues that 'moral panic' is one of the weakest concepts in the social sciences. In his book Theorizing Crime and Deviance,[25] he points out that even acknowledged experts in the study of the 'moral panic', such as Goode and Ben-Yehuda,[26] are unable to explain its source, its form or its effects. Hall argues that this is unsurprising because 'moral panic' is an imaginary idea that does not have its roots reality but in what he sees as a post-war cultural current of political catastrophism, a fear that any form of moral condemnation or dialectical politics might lead to the sort of brutal authoritarianism that manifested itself in Nazism and Stalinism.

Hall sees 'moral panic' not as a rational or analytical concept but as an imaginary product of the 'fear of fear'.[27] He goes on to argue that in the post-war era there is no evidence of a 'moral panic' reviving reactionary politics. For Hall, drawing on media analysts such as Silverstone,[28] the mass media do tend to sensationalize crime, but in the standard narrative the initial act that elicits concern is quickly resolved by the authorities. This creates complacency, not panic, by affirming the ability of the criminal justice system to solve crime and restore order. This endless circular narrative pacifies the population on behalf of centrist post-war governments.

Hall goes on to argue that the concept was already obsolete when it was thought of because post-war consumer capitalist society is not based on a 'moral order' or even a genuine 'moral conflict'. It became dominant by destroying the old moral order and replacing it with a regime of biopolitics (here Hall draws on the works of Slavoj Zizek and Bernard Stiegler, who both talk about the destruction of societies based on 'taboo' and the moral governance of the super ego). Hall adds that the last thing the liberal-conservative elite want is any type of 'panic', at which point the concept of 'moral panic' fails completely and we should "insist that it doesn't actually exist".[29]

For Hall, the concept has had a destructive effect on political and intellectual life for two reasons. Firstly, it promotes intellectual laziness as it distracts criminology's attention from its object of study and social science's attention from the real spaces of socio-economic disruption in which social fragmentation, discrimination and predatory relations have become normalised. This, he says, has contributed to what he describes as the liberal-left's loss of popularity and political failure since the 1970s.[27] Secondly, it unwittingly protects harmful and often socially powerful criminals from exposure and justifiable condemnation, therefore neutering critical schools of political and social science. In turn, this helps to neuter real politics, creating a vacuum into which the irresponsible mass media flow.[25]

See also

3

References

  1. ^ a b c Jones, M, and E. Jones. (1999). Mass Media. London: Macmillan Press
  2. ^ Cohen, S. (1973). Folk Devils and Moral Panics. St Albans: Paladin, p.9
  3. ^ Kuzma, Cindy. "Rights and Liberties: Sex, Lies, and Moral Panics". AlterNet. September 28, 2005. Accessed September 5, 2008.
  4. ^ Cohen, S., p.16
  5. ^ Thompson, K. in C. Critcher, (2006). Critical readings: Moral Panics in the Media. Berkshire: Open University Press, 2006)
  6. ^ Hall, S., et al. 1978. Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State and Law and Order. London: Macmillan Press. ISBN 0-333-22061-7 (paperback) ISBN 0-333-22060-9 (hardbound)
  7. ^ Bavelaar, R (2005-09-21). "'Moral Panic' and the Muslim". IslamOnline. Retrieved 2009-03-06.[dead link]
  8. ^ Ben-Yehuda N; Goode E (1994). Moral Panics: The Social Construction of Deviance. Oxford: Blackwell. pp. 57–65. ISBN 0-631-18905-X.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  9. ^ a b Jenkins, P (1998). Moral Panic: Changing Concepts of the Child Molester in Modern America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. pp. 207–231. ISBN 0-300-10963-6.
  10. ^ Victor JS (1993). Satanic Panic: The Creation of a Contemporary Legend. Open Court Publishing Company. pp. 55–6. ISBN 0-8126-9192-X.
  11. ^ de Young, Mary (2004). The Day Care Ritual Abuse Moral Panic. Jefferson, North Carolina, United States: McFarland and Company. pp. 42. ISBN 0-7864-1830-3.
  12. ^ Doezema, Jo (2000). "Loose women or lost women" (PDF). Gender Issues. 18 (1): 23–50. doi:10.1007/s12147-999-0021-9. (HTML version)
  13. ^ Weitzer, Ronald. (2007). "The Social Construction of Sex Trafficking: Ideology and Institutionalization of a Moral Crusade", Politics & Society 35(3):447–475. doi:10.1177/0032329207304319.
  14. ^ Milivojevic, Sanja (2008). "Women's bodies, moral panic and the world game: sex trafficking, the 2006 Football World Cup and beyond". Proceedings of the 2nd Australian & New Zealand Critical Criminology Conference (PDF). pp. 222–242.
  15. ^ Davies, Nick (2009-10-20). "Prostitution and trafficking – the anatomy of a moral panic". The Guardian. Retrieved 2009-11-29.
  16. ^ Hamai, K (2004). "How 'the Myth of Collapsing Safe Society' Has Been Created in Japan : Beyond the Moral Panic and Victim Industry(Rising Fear of Crime and Re-building Safe Society in Japan: Moral Panic or Evidence-Based Crime Control)". Japanese Journal of Sociological Criminology (29): 4–93.
  17. ^ "Drugs – facing facts: The report of the RSA Commission on Illegal Drugs, Communities and Public Policy" (pdf). Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures & Commerce. 2007. p. 15. Retrieved 2008-01-04.
  18. ^ Role-Playing Games and the Christian Right: Community Formation in Response to a Moral Panic in Journal of Religion and Popular Culture
  19. ^ Byrd, Patrick (2007). "It's All Fun and Games Until Somebody Gets Hurt: The Effectiveness of Proposed Video Game Regulation" (pdf). Retrieved 2007-03-19.
  20. ^ Christopher J. Ferguson (2008). "The School Shooting/Violent Video Game Link: Causal Link or Moral Panic?" (pdf). Retrieved 2009-11-13.
  21. ^ Gagne, Kenneth A. (2001-04-27). "Moral Panics Over Youth Culture and Video Games". Retrieved 2010-06-10.
  22. ^ Entertainment Software Rating Board
  23. ^ Cohen, S. (1980) Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of the Mods and Rockers. Oxford: Martin Robertson, pp. xxvi-xxxi
  24. ^ a b Jewkes Y (2004). Media and crime. Thousand Oaks, Calif: Sage. pp. 76–77. ISBN 0-7619-4765-5.
  25. ^ a b Hall, S. (2012) Theorizing Crime and Deviance: A New Perspective. London: Sage
  26. ^ Goode, E. & Ben-Yehuda, N. (2009) Moral Panics: The Social Construction of Deviance. Chichester: Wiley/Blackwell.
  27. ^ a b Hall, S., Winlow, S. and Ancrum, C. (2008) Criminal Identities and Consumer Culture: Crime, exclusion and the new culture of narcissism. Cullompton: Willan
  28. ^ Silverstone, R. (1994) Television and Everyday Life. London: Routledge
  29. ^ Hall, S. (2012) Theorizing Crime and Deviance: A New Perspective. London: Sage, p. 137

Further reading

  • Ben-Yehuda, Nachman; Goode, Erich (1994). Moral panics: the social construction of deviance. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-18905-X.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Jasper, James M. (2001). "Moral Panics". In Smelser, N. J.; Baltes, Paul B. (eds.). International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Oxford: Pergamon. pp. 10029–10033. ISBN 0-08-043076-7.
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