Moral Panics Over Contemporary Children And Youth

The concept of moral panic has received considerable scholarly attention, but as yet little attention has been accorded to panics over children and youth. This is the first book to examine this important and controversial social issue by employing a rigorous intellectual framework to explore the cultural construction of youth, through the dissemination of moral panics. It is accessible in manner and makes use of the latest contemporary research by addressing some of the pressing recent concerns relating to children and youth, including cyber-related panics, child abuse and pornography, education and crime. A truly international collection, this volume features new global research focusing on the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, South Africa, and France as well as the United States. Genuinely multidisciplinary in approach, it will appeal to researchers and students across the social sciences and humanities - from sociology and social theory, to media, education, anthropology, criminology, geography and history.

The Ashgate Research Companion to Moral Panics offers a comprehensive assemblage of cutting-edge critical and theoretical perspectives on the concept of moral panic. All chapters represent original research by many of the most influential theorists and researchers now working in the area of moral panic, including Nachman Ben-Yehuda and Erich Goode, Joel Best, Chas Critcher, Mary deYoung, Alan Hunt, Toby Miller, Willem Schinkel, Kenneth Thompson, Sheldon Ungar, and Grazyna Zajdow. Chapters come from a range of disciplines, including media studies, literary studies, history, legal studies, and sociology, with significant new elaborations on the concept of moral panic (and its future), informed and powerful critiques, and detailed empirical studies from several continents. A clear and comprehensive survey of a concept that is increasingly influential in a number of disciplines as well as in popular culture, this collection of the latest research in the field addresses themes including the evolution of the moral panic concept, sex panics, media panics, moral panics over children and youth, and the future of the moral panic concept.

We live in a world that is increasingly characterized as risky, dangerous, and threatening. Every day, a new social issue emerges to assail our sensibilities and consciences, seemingly designed to provoke a shared sense of panic. Drawing on the popular UK Economic Social and Research Council seminar series, this book uses the concept of moral panic to examine these social issues and anxieties and the solutions to them. With an introduction by Chas Critcher—coeditor ofMoral Panics in the Contemporary World—and contributions from both well-known and up-and-coming researchers and practitioners, this book offers a stimulating and innovative overview of moral panic ideas for students and practitioners and an accessible introduction to the concept for a wider general public.

The Ashgate Research Companion to Moral Panics offers a comprehensive assemblage of cutting-edge critical and theoretical perspectives on the concept of moral panic. All chapters represent original research by many of the most influential theorists and researchers now working in the area of moral panic, including Nachman Ben-Yehuda and Erich Goode, Joel Best, Chas Critcher, Mary deYoung, Alan Hunt, Toby Miller, Willem Schinkel, Kenneth Thompson, Sheldon Ungar, and Grazyna Zajdow. Chapters come from a range of disciplines, including media studies, literary studies, history, legal studies, and sociology, with significant new elaborations on the concept of moral panic (and its future), informed and powerful critiques, and detailed empirical studies from several continents. A clear and comprehensive survey of a concept that is increasingly influential in a number of disciplines as well as in popular culture, this collection of the latest research in the field addresses themes including the evolution of the moral panic concept, sex panics, media panics, moral panics over children and youth, and the future of the moral panic concept.

We live in a world that is increasingly characterized as risky, dangerous, and threatening. Every day, a new social issue emerges seemingly designed to provoke a shared sense of panic. Drawing on the popular UK Economic Social and Research Council seminar series, this book uses the concept of moral panic to examine these social issues and anxieties and the solutions to them. With an introduction by Charles Critcher--coeditor of Moral Panics in the Contemporary World--and contributions from both well-known and up-and-coming researchers and practitioners, this book offers a stimulating and innovative overview of moral panic ideas for students and practitioners and an accessible introduction to the concept for a wider general public.

This study provides a comprehensive critique - forensic, historical, and theoretical - of the moral panic paradigm, using empirically grounded ethnographic research to argue that the panic paradigm suffers from fundamental flaws that make it a myth rather than a viable academic perspective.

'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.

How do the moral panics that have plagued school education since it’s nineteenth-century beginnings impact current school education policy? Research has shown young people to be particularly vulnerable to moral panics and, with the rise of social media, the impact of moral panics on school education is growing exponentially. Increasingly, they are reaching into the highest levels of national governments and, so powerful are their effects, some politicians choose to orchestrate them for their own political ends. For many educational administrators, the management of the ‘fallout’ of moral panics has become a time-consuming part of their day, as well as being a problematic time for parents, teachers and students. First developed by British and Canadian sociologists such as Stanley Cohen (1972), moral panic theory has evolved substantially since its early focus on adolescent deviant behaviour, and is now a part of common media talk. This book addresses the need for a single monograph on the topic, with reference to historical moral panics such as those associated with sexuality education, but also wider societal moral panics such as those associated with obesity. Teachers, students, indeed all members of school communities, along with educational administrators and politicians can learn from this study of the impact of moral panics on school educational policy.