The international controversy (highlighted in Britain by the Bulger case) over the relationship between video nasties and crime is one that has a long prior history. Do books, films or magazines create a corrupting environment which encourages crime and moral decay? Dr. Springhall has written a highly perceptive and entertaining account of how commercial culture in Britain and America has been viewed, since its inception during the Industrial Revolution, as a force likely to undermine national morals. There has been wave after wave of scares: from the Victorian penny gaff theatres and penny dreadful novels to Hollywood gangster films, and American horror comics. A final chapter refers to video nasties, violence on television, 'gansta-rap' and computer games, each in turn playing the role of folk devils which must be causing delinquency. Why particular issues suddenly galvanize public attention, and why so many people have associated delinquency with entertainment, form the fascinating subjects of this groundbreaking book.

Moral panics reveal much about a society’s social structure and the sociology embedded in everyday life. This short text examines extreme reactions to American popular culture over the past century, including crusades against comic books, music, and pinball machines, to help convey the "sociological imagination" to undergraduates. Sternheimer creates a critical lens through which to view current and future attempts of modern-day moral crusaders, who try to convince us that simple solutions—like regulating popular culture—are the answer to complex social problems. Pop Culture Panics is ideal for use in undergraduate social problems, social deviance, and popular culture courses.

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.

Adolescence, like childhood, is more than a biologically defined life stage: it is also a sociohistorical construction. The meaning and experience of adolescence are reformulated according to societal needs, evolving scientific precepts, and national aspirations relative to historic conditions. Although adolescence was by no means a “discovery” of the early twentieth century, it did assume an identifiably modern form during the years between the Great War and 1950. The Dominion of Youth: Adolescence and the Making of Modern Canada, 1920 to 1950 captures what it meant for young Canadians to inhabit this liminal stage of life within the context of a young nation caught up in the self-formation and historic transformation that would make modern Canada. Because the young at this time were seen paradoxically as both the hope of the nation and the source of its possible degeneration, new policies and institutions were developed to deal with the “problem of youth.” This history considers how young Canadians made the transition to adulthood during a period that was “developmental”—both for youth and for a nation also working toward individuation. During the years considered here, those who occupied this “dominion” of youth would see their experiences more clearly demarcated by generation and culture than ever before. With this book, Cynthia Comacchio offers the first detailed study of adolescence in early-twentieth-century Canada and demonstrates how young Canadians of the period became the nation’s first modern teenagers.

'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.

The media have always played a central role in organising the way ideas flow through societies. But what happens when those ideas are disruptive to normal social relations? Bringing together work by scholars in history, media and cultural studies and sociology, this collection explores this role in more depth and with more attention paid to the complexities behind conventional analyses. Attention is paid to morality and regulation; empire and film; the role of women; authoritarianism; wartime and fears of treachery; and fears of cultural contamination. The book begins with essays that contextualise the theoretical and historiographical issues of the relationship between social fears, moral panics and the media. The second section provides case studies which illustrate the ways in which the media has participated in, or been seen as the source of, the creation of threats to society. Finally, the third section then shows how historical research calls into question simple assumptions about the relationship between the media and social disruption.

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.