Moral Panic and Social Theory

Moral Panic and Sexual Offenses against Children

It had all the appearances of a conventional sentencing hearing. The accused sat quietly in the front row of the Middleton Court House with his wife beside him, arm in arm. She gave him one last hug after the judge pronounced sentence: five years in a federal institution. Among the small group attending the hearing were two young teenagers, the daughters of the accused. When the judge handed do...

Conceptualizing Moral Panic through a Moral Economy of Harm

This paper explicates a critical theory of moral panic, arguing that there is an afŽ nity to be discerned between the sociology of moral panic and the sociology of moral regulation. It is demonstrated how efforts to distance sociological investigations of moral regulation from studies of moral panic have been founded on a narrow treatment of the ways in which the latter have conceptualized pani...

Social policy and mental illness in England in the 1990s: violence, moral panic and critical discourse.

Violence perpetrated by people experiencing mental illness poses a continuing challenge to practitioners and policy makers in the mental health field. It has been suggested, however, that policy developments in England during the period 1990--2000 became unduly dominated by the perceived need to prevent such violence and in particular that a 'moral panic' occurred following a series of high pro...

Moral Phenomenology and Moral Theory

Appeals to moral phenomenology—the phenomenology of moral experience—are common in moral philosophy, particularly in metaethical inquiry. But as far as we can tell, the topic of moral phenomenology has not typically been center stage—a focus of inquiry in ethics. And so, going back at least to the writings of G. E. Moore (and with some notable exceptions— see below), very little has been writte...

Social Cognitive Theory of Moral Thought and Action