Analysis Of Stanley Cohen 's ' Folk Devils And Moral Panics '

Carl Deuker was born in San Franscisco on August 26, 1950. He was raised in Redwood City, California. He is the son of Jack Deuker and Marie Milligan Deuker. He attended the University of California, Berkeley majoring in English. He describes himself as a classic second-stringer who wasn’t very athletic. Carl is currently teaching junior high English and physical science in Northshore School District outside of Seattle. He is also, the author of Heart of a Champion, Night Hoops, Painting the Black, High Heat, Runner, and Swagger. On the Devil’s Court was a YA book of the year in South Carolina.

“We wore torn-up leather jackets, slouched around with toothpicks in our mouths, sniffed glue and ether and what somebody claimed was cocaine. When we wheeled our parents whining station wagons out onto the street we left a patch of rubber half a block long. We drank gin and grape juice, Tango, Thunderbird, and Bali Hai. We were nineteen. We were bad. We read Andre Gide and struck elaborate poses to show that we didn’t give a shit about anything.” (Boyle 129)

This is written as if not a call to action, then a call to galvanize. The purposes of this report is to enable readers to through empirical and contextual description see the war on drugs for what is really is: a public relations ploy whose end results are not fighting drugs, but

Explaining and defining deviance is not as straight forward and simple as one may think. Numerous sociologists have come up with various definitions in an attempt to cover all the crucial aspects of deviance. The reason is that deviance is relative to time and place. So, within different societies/cultures deviant acts vary greatly. Very general definitions that barely scrape the surface of the idea of deviance would say something such as, “a behavior that violates social norms” or, “an absence of conformity of social norms”. But to really become intimate with the subject of deviance, one needs to have an open mind and consider all the perspectives that other cultures have. The sale and use of marijuana provides one of the best portrayals of the direct relationship of deviance with time and place.

How did the sociologist Stanley Cohen define the concept moral panics? What, if any, is its continued relevance? Discuss with reference to sociological research.

The primary drug user in the 1960s was the male college student involved in politics. Richard Flacks states "The increasingly common use of marijuana and psychedelic and mood-manipulating drugs on college campuses and among youth in general needs no documentation."8 Lance Christie, a drug researcher, said "A student who bought into the drug culture in the 1960s was buying into an elitist high-performance group."9

Oftenly people within a culture create its own organizing principles and definitions when certain things occur that affect a community and/or society simultaneously, one of them being moral panics. Erich Goode and Nachman Ben-Yehuda introduces us to the concept of moral panics and what they consists of in their article “Moral Panics: Culture, Politics, and Social Construction”. According to the author 's, moral panic is an exaggerated response or concern by the public to an issue that is seen as threatening the moral standards of society, however the harm exposed may be minimal to none, usually ignited by the media, higher officials, action groups and so forth . Moral panic has become a well-known word often used to categorize social problems that we are exposed to today. Here, we see some examples of the three theories: the grassroots model, the elite-engineered model, and the interest-group theory, and how they are present in our lives today.

In other words it can be said that the drug hysterias that sweep the US can be safely ignored if focus is instead on the ethical concerns of social marginalisation that cause the addictions and abuse such as poverty and racism (Room, 2005).

Michael Tonry in his book “Thinking About Crime” brings up the subject of moral panics (pg 86). A moral panic as defined by Stuart Hall is as follows

As mentioned earlier Stanley Cohen (1972) is one of prominent sociologists that devised the term ‘moral panic’. He defined the concept as ‘A sporadic episode which, as it occurs, subject’s society to bouts of moral panic, or in other terms, worries about the values and principles which society upholds which may be in jeopardy’ (Cohen, 1987; 9). The term ‘moral panic’ was introduced by Stanley Cohen (1972) in his book entitled ‘Folk Devils and Moral Panics’.

A moral panic is the public’s response to problems that seem threatening to the society. Moral panics are used by the media, however people are likely to panic out of proportion due the way it is upheld.

A moral panic develops in a society when there is some type of threat looking to harm the society in some way. The threat of a nuclear attack by the USSR and its possible plan to control society through communism aided in the development of a moral panic during the Cold War era (Cold War History). American fears continued to grow as the relationship between the two countries became very tense (Hadley). During the Cold War era, the public

Throughout this essay the sociological imagination is used to analyse the historical, cultural and structural reasons for drug use and abuse. Within this parameter the sociological imagination is applied, using studies research conducted in the United Kingdom, Australia, Russia and the United States. The sociological imagination was defined by Charles Write Mills as a ‘quality of mind’. (Mills quoted by Germov, Poole 2007: 4 ) It is stimulated by an awareness to view the social world by looking at how one’s own personal problems and experiences form a relationship to the wider society. In Victorian society the majority of people believed there was no ‘drug problem.' (Berridge, 1999) The substances used in Britain at the time like opium

Moral panics have been a topic of interest by those who are concerned with criminal and deviant behavior for many years. The term first appeared in criminology in a book written by Stan Cohen, in 1972 and involved a general misinterpretation of the situation, with an exaggerated reaction to a perceived threat, when the actual threat that is being offered (Cohen, S., 1972) (Walters, R., & Bradley, T., 2005). This essay will attempt to explore this concept in further detail, with regards to the literatures findings and explanations of the motives, processes and finer details of a moral panic. It will then explain the media’s role in perpetuating the cycle that is involved with a moral panic. This will include the justification that is used by those in media roles, and the “melodrama” (Anker 2005) (Wright, S., 2015) that is often used in the reports of the issues that give rise to the panics. Lastly, the outcomes of the media’s influential role in the process will be examined through the literature, and also through examples of moral panics in recent settings. This will hopefully provide an overall understanding of the development, perpetuation, and lasting effects that are involved in a moral panic.

Moral Panic Moral panic is a widely used and often misinterpreted concept in social sciences. The term was invented by the British sociologist Stanley Cohen the late sixties. Cohen defined moral panic as a form of collective behaviour during which: "A condition, episode, person or group emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests; its nature is presented in a stylised and stereotypical fashion by the mass media; the moral barricades are manned by editors, bishops, politicians and other right thinking people; socially accredited experts pronounce their diagnosis and solutions; ways of coping are evolved or (more often) resorted to; the condition then disappears,