Patterning Moral Panics

Abstract

In developing a methodology for modelling panic-driven scapegoating as a persistent historical phenomenon (i.e. by demonstrating historical patterning of moral panics), we are aided greatly at the outset by two central canons in the western literary tradition—The Crucible, by US playwright Arthur Miller (1953), and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1948), by English novelist George Orwell. As central canons of Western literature, The Crucible and Nineteen Eighty-Four are both remarkable in that, in one form or another, they treat the tendency of scapegoating never to prosper, helping as a commentary on two different historical parallels to establish the pattern and construct the theoretical scapegoating model.