Folk Devils Research Articles

In the Name of ‘Childhood Innocence’: A Discursive Exploration of the Moral Panic Associated with Childhood and Sexuality

This article critically examines moral panic as a political strategy in maintaining the hegemony of the nuclear family, the sanctity of hetereosexual relationships and the heteronormative social order. It focuses on the moral panic associated with children and sexuality, particularly that which is manifested around non-heterosexual subjectivities. The discussion is based on media representations of the moral panic associated with the Play School saga, The Tillman Child Care Centre / Learn to Include booklets and the We’re Here resource. It explores the hegemonic discourses around childhood innocence, sexuality and the construction of the homosexual as ‘folk devil’ and shows how these discourses are mobilised by conservative politicians and moral entrepreneurs to strategically instigate a moral panic at critical points in time.

A modern moral panic: the representation of British Bangladeshi and Pakistani youth in relation to violence and religion

Moral panics have arisen about young British Pakistani and Bangladeshi males along two veins: violence and religion. Throughout this article I shall demonstrate that these young men should be considered modern "folk devils", by placing them at the end of a succession of young deviants who have been repeatedly vilified. This is firstly explored through notions of ethnicity and criminality, via the analysis of media, government and public responses to "gangs" and the "riots" that took place in several northern industrial towns in the UK in 1995 and 2001, as well as Paris in 2005. Then the moral panic surrounding religion is explored, which seems to have overtaken the panic surrounding localised violence but still features the same protagonists. "Islamophobia" is discussed in relation to xenophobic media and state representations of young Muslim men and how the latter interact with these derisive stereotypes. Exploring the increased interest of non-practising young Muslims in Islam, I suggest that this has had both beneficial and adverse consequences.

Ritalin®: Panic in the USA

Ritalin® is a popular pharmaceutical. It keeps young people quiet and focused, but attracts intense opprobrium. Beginning with an account of the dimensions of Ritalin®’s use in the United States and controversies surrounding it, this article outlines how this might be understood in moral-panic terms and examines the role of the psy-function and various conflicts of interest, coverage in popular culture, and governmental responses. In many cases, progressive academics and activists have criticised moral panics, recuperating moral-panic folk devils as semiotic guerrillas struggling against authority. In this instance, however, the scene is too complex and multifaceted for that heroisation. There are no good guys; there is lots of panic, from all political-economic quarters. Some of it is justified—and none of it is straightforward.