Abstract
Reviewed by: Stephen Crossley, Durham University, England
This intriguing book sets out, from the first sentence, to examine how useful theories of moral panics are to understanding and explaining social issues today, with a particular focus on issues that concern social workers. The book, which is primarily aimed at students and practitioners, and others who may be relatively new to the concept of moral panics, builds on a successful series of seminars that took place between 2012 and 2014, marking the 40th anniversary of Stan Cohen’s (1972) classic work, Folk Devils and Moral Panics. It consists of 20 different chapters, primarily from the UK but also including contributions from Italy and New Zealand, and arranged in four sections, each with an introduction by one of the editors and an afterword by a practitioner. The four sections are: gender and the family; childhood and youth; the state, government and citizens; and moral crusades, moral regulation and morality. Each of the sections, in a positive publishing development, is also available as a ‘bite-sized’ standalone book, at a greatly reduced price.
The editors have adopted an inclusive approach to contributions and have not attempted to impose a singular understanding or a ‘moral panic straightjacket’ on contributors. This, the editors acknowledge, is in keeping with Cohen’s challenge to ‘stay unfinished’ and be able to live with uncomfortable ambiguity.
Chas Critcher’s introductory chapter is one of the most readable, accessible and insightful summaries of the state of play on the concept of moral panics that one could wish for, unsurprising given Critcher was a co-author of perhaps the ‘other’ classic moral panics book Policing the crisis (Hall, Critcher, Jefferson, Clarke, & Roberts, 1978). Critcher’s comparison of Cohen’s processual model of moral panics and Gode and Ben-Yehuda’s attributional model, the explication of the ‘five clusters’ of topics for moral panics, and his summary of criticisms of moral panic theories provide useful frameworks to return to throughout the book. Critcher ends his introductory chapter by arguing that future researchers need to develop and update the concept of moral panics without overstretching it, or applying it where it doesn’t belong.
Not all of the chapters adhere to Critcher’s three ‘general lessons’ for moral panic analysis: the necessary existence of a folk devil; the influence of pressure groups; and the policy or legislative consequences of a panic being created. Instead, the analysis in the book is extended and deployed in different chapters in a number of different and dynamic ways. A chapter on patient safety by William Fear traces the lineage of moral panics back to physicians in the 1830s and highlights its role in institutional transformation in the medical field. Dawn Mannay’s chapter examining working class femininity in a deprived Welsh neighbourhood deploys the concept of ‘spatial folk devils’ to understand the stigma of place felt by residents of marginalised areas. Stuart Waiton argues, in his chapter, that the ‘rise of early intervention’ amounts to ‘a moral panic’. Other chapters apply moral panic theory in a more traditional way, but bring it to bear on new problems, with David McKendrick’s chapter on radicalisation and Benson and Charsleys’ chapter on sham marriages being good examples of this approach.
The breadth of topics covered by the various chapters is fascinating but, at times, the constraints of space meant that I was left wanting more depth. Similarly, the practitioner-focused afterwords worked well, but I would have liked more critical engagement with some of the developments in the preceding chapters. Cohen famously argued that societies were gripped by moral panics ‘every now and then’, and a book on moral panics with 20 different contributions could perhaps have engaged with the question of whether moral panics are now becoming more frequent as inequality grows and insecurity abounds, or whether the concept is being exercised in uncritical ways. The editors would, quite rightly, argue that these concerns reflect their intention to ‘stay unfinished’ and their desire to stimulate debate rather than close it down with closed or ‘finished’ arguments and conclusions.
These, however, are small criticisms, and the book serves as a very good introduction to the continuing relevance and dynamism of the concept of moral panics in contemporary times. The editors will have been successful if, like me, other readers are left wanting more, wrestling with their own ‘uncomfortable ambiguity’.