Moral Panics in the Contemporary World

Moral Panics in the Contemporary World PDF Author: Julian Petley
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1501319604
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 309

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Book Description
Moral Panics in the Contemporary World represents the best current theoretical and empirical work on the topic, taken from the international conference on moral panics held at Brunel University. The range of contributors, from established scholars to emerging ones in the field, and from a working journalist as well, helps to cover a wide range of moral panics, both old and new, and extend the geographical scope of moral panic analysis to previously underrepresented areas. Designed from the outset to comprise a coherent and integrated set of viewpoints which share a common engagement with critically exploring moral panics in the contemporary world, it contains case studies instantly recognisable and familiar to a student readership (drugs, alcohol, sexual abuse and racism). The collection brings a fresh approach to analysis and argument by testing and extending the concept of moral panic and analyzing a range of topics and geographical contexts, accurately reflecting the state-of-the-art moral panics research today.

Modern Folk Devils

Modern Folk Devils PDF Author: Martin Demant Frederiksen
Publisher: Helsinki University Press
ISBN: 9523690558
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
The devilish has long been integral to myths, legends, and folklore, firmly located in the relationships between good and evil, and selves and others. But how are ideas of evil constructed in current times and framed by contemporary social discourses? Modern Folk Devils builds on and works with Stanley Cohen’s theory on folk devils and moral panics to discuss the constructions of evil. The authors present an array of case-studies that illustrate how the notion of folk devils nowadays comes into play and animates ideas of otherness and evil throughout the world. Examining current fears and perceived threats, this volume investigates and analyzes how and why these devils are constructed. The chapters discuss how the devilish may take on many different forms: sometimes they exist only as a potential threat, other times they are a single individual or phenomenon or a visible group, such as refugees, technocrats, Roma, hipsters, LGBT groups, and rightwing politicians. Folk devils themselves are also given a voice to offer an essential complementary perspective on how panics become exaggerated, facts distorted, and problems acutely angled. Bringing together researchers from anthropology, sociology, political studies, ethnology, and criminology, the contributions examine cases from across the world spanning from Europe to Asia and Oceania.

Folk Devils and Moral Panics

Folk Devils and Moral Panics PDF Author: Stanley Cohen
Publisher: Taylor & Francis US
ISBN: 9780415610162
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
'Richly documented and convincingly presented' -- New Society Mods and Rockers, skinheads, video nasties, designer drugs, bogus asylum seeks and hoodies. Every era has its own moral panics. It was Stanley Cohen's classic account, first published in the early 1970s and regularly revised, that brought the term 'moral panic' into widespread discussion. It is an outstanding investigation of the way in which the media and often those in a position of political power define a condition, or group, as a threat to societal values and interests. Fanned by screaming media headlines, Cohen brilliantly demonstrates how this leads to such groups being marginalised and vilified in the popular imagination, inhibiting rational debate about solutions to the social problems such groups represent. Furthermore, he argues that moral panics go even further by identifying the very fault lines of power in society. Full of sharp insight and analysis, Folk Devils and Moral Panics is essential reading for anyone wanting to understand this powerful and enduring phenomenon. Professor Stanley Cohen is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics. He received the Sellin-Glueck Award of the American Society of Criminology (1985) and is on the Board of the International Council on Human Rights. He is a member of the British Academy.

We Believe the Children

We Believe the Children PDF Author: Richard Beck
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 1610392884
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
A brilliant, disturbing portrait of the dawn of the culture wars, when America started to tear itself apart with doubts, wild allegations, and an unfounded fear for the safety of children. During the 1980s in California, New Jersey, New York, Michigan, Massachusetts, Florida, Tennessee, Texas, Ohio, and elsewhere, day care workers were arrested, charged, tried, and convicted of committing horrible sexual crimes against the children they cared for. These crimes, social workers and prosecutors said, had gone undetected for years, and they consisted of a brutality and sadism that defied all imagining. The dangers of babysitting services and day care centers became a national news media fixation. Of the many hundreds of people who were investigated in connection with day care and ritual abuse cases around the country, some 190 were formally charged with crimes, leading to more than 80 convictions. It would take years for people to realize what the defendants had said all along -- that these prosecutions were the product of a decade-long outbreak of collective hysteria on par with the Salem witch trials. Social workers and detectives employed coercive interviewing techniques that led children to tell them what they wanted to hear. Local and national journalists fanned the flames by promoting the stories' salacious aspects, while aggressive prosecutors sought to make their careers by unearthing an unspeakable evil where parents feared it most. Using extensive archival research and drawing on dozens of interviews conducted with the hysteria's major figures, n+1 editor Richard Beck shows how a group of legislators, doctors, lawyers, and parents -- most working with the best of intentions -- set the stage for a cultural disaster. The climate of fear that surrounded these cases influenced a whole series of arguments about women, children, and sex. It also drove a right-wing cultural resurgence that, in many respects, continues to this day.

Moral Panics And The Media

Moral Panics And The Media PDF Author: Critcher, Chas
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education (UK)
ISBN: 0335209084
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
"Chas Critcher's study is doubly welcome as it discusses theoretical underpinnings thoroughly, and also provides a set of illustrative case studies... This is an important and stimulating book for a range of audiences."VISTA Vol 8 no 3 How are social problems defined and responded to in contemporary society? What is the role of the media in creating, endorsing and sustaining moral panics? The term `moral panic' is frequently applied to sudden outbreaks of concern about social problems. Chas Critcher critically evaluates the usefulness of moral panic models for understanding how politicians, the public and pressure groups come to recognise apparent new threats to the social order, and he scrutinizes the role of the media, especially the popular press. Two models of moral panics are identified and explained, then applied to a range of case studies: AIDS; rave culture and the drug ecstasy; video nasties; child abuse; paedophilia. Examples of moral panics from a range of countries reveal many basic similarities but also significant variations between different national contexts. The conclusion is that moral panic remains a useful tool for analysis but needs more systematic connection to wider theoretical concerns, especially those of the risk society and discourse analysis.

Intimate Enemies

Intimate Enemies PDF Author: Philip Jenkins
Publisher: Transaction Publishers
ISBN: 9780202366920
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
Intimate Enemies describes the creation of a journalistically induced panic in Great Britain during the the 1980s - a decade of intense concern about a closely related set of perceived problems: sexual abuse of children, child pornography, satanic rituals, and serial murder. It was widely alleged that such practices became more common during the decade, and the notoriety attracted major attention from the mass media, as well as from agencies in law enforcement, social welfare, and mental health.

Moral Panics and School Educational Policy

Moral Panics and School Educational Policy PDF Author: Grant Rodwell
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1351627813
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 211

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Book Description
This book explores school educational policy through the lens of moral panic theory at a theoretical level, and through a select history of moral panics in school education during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Moral Panics, Sex Panics

Moral Panics, Sex Panics PDF Author: Gilbert Herdt
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814737234
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
This work focuses on case studies ranging from sex education to AIDS to race to illustrate how sexuality is at the heart of many political controversies.

Mass Deception

Mass Deception PDF Author: Scott A. Bonn
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 0813547881
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 211

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Book Description
"Mass Deception argues that the George W. Bush administration manufactured public support for the war on Iraq."--Page 4 of cover.

Revisiting Moral Panics

Revisiting Moral Panics PDF Author: Cree, Viviene E.
Publisher: Policy Press
ISBN: 1447321855
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
We live in a world that is increasingly characterised as full of risk, danger and threat. Every day a new social issue emerges to assail our sensibilities and consciences. Drawing on the popular Economic Social and Research Council (ESRC) seminar series, this book examines these social issues and anxieties, and the solutions to them, through the concept of moral panic. With a commentary by Charles Critcher and contributions from both well-known and up-and-coming researchers and practitioners, this is a stimulating and innovative overview of moral panic ideas, which will be an essential resource.