Locating moral panics within the sociology of social problems

Abstract

Moral panic studies and constructionist studies of social problems both have their roots in the labeling perspective on deviance. By the mid-1960s, labeling theorists had reconceptualized deviance in terms of societal reaction; in Howard Becker’s phrase: ‘deviant behavior is behavior that people so label’ (1963: 9). This raised the question of the label’s origins; Becker’s answer was that labels are promoted by moral entrepreneurs who organize moral crusades to encourage people to define particular behaviors as deviant. Labeling theory captured the imagination of a new generation of sociologists, notonly in the U.S., but also in the U.K. British scholars began delivering papers inspired by the labeling approach at meetings of the National Deviancy Conference (NDC), and by the early 1970s some of this work was being published. Jock Young and Stanley Cohen were central figures in the NDC. Young (1971) was the first person to mention moral panics in print, although he used the term in passing. It was Cohen’s Folk Devils and Moral Panics (2002) that developed and drew attention to the concept. Like moral entrepreneur and moral crusade, moral panic was intended to help conceptualize how concerns about deviance could be mobilized. Cohen’s book was built around the media reaction to a series of holiday-weekendseaside scuffles during 1964-65 between two stylistically distinct groups of workingclass British youth: the Mods and the Rockers. The British press portrayed these minor disorderly incidents as emblematic of a crisis: out-of-control youth threatening the social order. And Cohen, in turn, named the exaggerated reaction a moral panic (Cohen 2002: 1). Although neither moral crusade nor panic was defined precisely, Cohen’s moralpanics seemed different from Becker’s moral crusades. The latter, typified by the Federal Bureau of Narcotics’ campaign to criminalize marijuana, seemed more calculated: reformers or officials, motivated by moralistic concerns, designed a campaign to define some behavior as deviant; the outcome was often some enduring label. In contrast, moral panics, as exemplified by the concern over Mods and Rockers,seemed more spontaneous, more episodic, and shorter lived. As Cohen noted, anxiety about youth culture was ‘one of the most recurrent types of moral panic in Britain’ (Cohen 2002: 1). The focus on the Mods and Rockers was temporary; it was just one in a series of waves of anxiety about troubling youth, coming after worries about Teddy Boys and shortly before concern shifted to hippies. By the mid-1970s, doubts about labeling theory had become widespread. InEngland, sociologists of deviance shifted to a more radical approach. The key statement of this position, The New Criminology, was written by three leading figures from the NDC – including Jock Young (Taylor, Walton, and Young 1973). In the U.S., labeling came under attack from several directions, including conflict theorists, feminists, and mainstream sociologists (Best 2004). In response, some sociologists of deviance moved to develop a constructionist theory of social problems. Sociologists had long defined social problems as harmful social conditions, and theyhad long understood this was an unsatisfactory definition. The list of harmful conditions – everything from suicide to global overpopulation – was too diverse to support analysis. The solution was to define social problems as a process – the process by which people made claims that something ought to be considered troubling (Blumer 1971; Spector and Kitsuse, 1977; Best, 2008). The claims-making process was what everything on the list of social problems had in common. Following Malcolm Spector and John I. Kitsuse’s publication of Constructing SocialProblems in 1977 (generally taken to be the key event in the emergence of the constructionist perspective), a substantial literature emerged to explore a range of claimsmaking trajectories: some claims originate with activists, but others start with victims, experts, journalists, or officials; some center around campaigns to attract public attention and arouse outrage, but others involve lobbying or other less visible activities; some become the focus for intense public debates over policy, but others fail to shape policy, and still others lead to policies without attracting much attention; some issues remain contentious and seem intractable, while others are resolved; and so on. From the view of sociologists of social problems, both moral crusades and moral panics are subtypes of the larger phenomenon of social problems construction. In this chapter, I argue that analysts of moral panic have adopted excessively casualanalytic standards, that they lack a clear, coherent definition of moral panic, and that the term has evolved to become a label of disapproval rather than a useful sociological concept. I begin by identifying some key characteristics of a ‘classic’ moral panic. I then argue that analysts have applied the term both expansively (in the sense that the list of items that has designated moral panics is quite diverse) and selectively (in the sense that moral panic is applied according to ideological rather than analytic rules). Finally, I argue that moral panic – defined more precisely – has the potential to be a far more useful concept, if it is located within the larger framework of social problems theory.To appreciate causal nature of panic analysis and its relationship to social problems, consider British concerns about ‘shag bands’ (cheap plastic bracelets in various colorsworn by school children). During the fall of 2009, the British press claimed that different colored bracelets stood for specific sexual acts that the wearer had to perform when a bracelet was broken.1 This is an exemplary – what we might call a classic – moral panic in the Mods and Rockers tradition: a burst of attention in the British media, focused on an apparently minor phenomenon that could be interpreted as evidence of disturbing social trends (the sexualization of childhood, the commercialization of sexuality, and so on). It seems to be the most recent version of fears about cultural practices of randy youth – a successor to objects of concern stretching from petting parties2 and spin the bottle to rainbow parties3 and hooking up. We can use the shag band story to clarify some key elements of the classic orconventional approach to moral panic.4 Shag bands draw our attention to four key qualities of classic moral panics: they are short lived, irrational, media centered, and politically conservative.5