23 research outputs found
Creating spaces for change:engaging civil society to harness change in criminal justice practice
Konfliktregelung ohne Strafe. Weshalb Strafe in Alltagskonflikten keine Funktionen hat. Und warum Gesellschaft nicht zusammenbricht, wenn staatliches Strafen verschwindet
Linking Moralisation and Class Identity: The Role of Ressentiment and Respectability in the Social Reaction to āChavsā
Moral Panics and the Transgressive Other
The concept of moral panic arose out of a particular conjuncture of political, social and theoretical circumstances; specifically the events of 1968, the social transformations of the late 1960s and the synthesis and energizing of New Deviancy and subcultural theory in British criminology centering on the NDC (National Deviancy Conference) and the CCCS (Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies). This work evoked Millsās Sociological Imagination: the placing of individual problems as public issues, the relation of the individual to his or her particular time and social structure, and the effect of social dynamics on the psychological and psychodynamics on the social. The sociological imagination is not a constant but is greatly enhanced at times of change: it is this imagination which engenders transformative politics. Such an analysis clearly demands placing both human actors and reactors, in this instance, ādeviantsā and moral panickers, in structure and historical time and to examine both the immediate and deep roots of their behaviour. There is a tendency in these neo-liberal times to view moral panics as simple mistakes in rationality generated perhaps by the mass media or rumour. In this process any link between the individual and the social structure, between historical period and social conflict, is lost. In particular the peculiar ārational irrationalityā of moral panics is obfuscated, the link between social structure and individual belief diminished, and attempts to utilize moral panics to stymie social change and transformative politics obscured