417603

CMCXXX10.1177/1741659011417603CohenCrime Media Culture

Article

Whose side were we on?

The undeclared politics of
moral panic theory

Crime Media Culture

7(3) 237243
The Author(s) 2011
Reprints and permission:
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DOI: 10.1177/1741659011417603
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Stanley Cohen1

Abstract
This paper deals with some hidden political dimensions of moral panic theory. It concentrates
on the implications of two related claims about what this battle meant: first, that moral panics
are inherently normative and can be categorized as good and bad moral panics (the ones that
we study are invariably bad); second, that students of moral panics have to take sides in this
normative battle. There are differences in the ways this question was originally posed in the late
1960s and today.

Keywords
deviance, labelling, moral panics, social control
This paper deals with certain political aspects of moral panic theory. We have long been aware of
the hidden and not-so-hidden political agendas which lie behind the strategies and rhetoric of
moral panics. Most of the subject has been well exposed and helpfully analysed (Garland, 2008).
We have not always, however, followed up the awkward claim that the concept is inherently
judgemental, normative and biased. Nor are there satisfactory answers to a derivative question:
can there be good and bad moral panics? (Cohen, 2002). All such questions versions of the old
1960s sociology of deviance slogan Whose side are we on? sound embarrassingly simplified to
the postmodern consciousness. But these questions, 40 years (!) later, remain the same (and are
by no means simple).
Examples include: How do political considerations influence the primary selection of certain
conditions for exposure and construction as a potential moral panic? Then, after the condition
becomes a candidate for moral panic status, how do primary definers the media, politicians,
social control agents, moral entrepreneurs use particular political tactics and rhetorical constructions? What are the dominant political consequences of moral panics? And so on.

1London

School of Economics, UK
Email: s.cohen@lse.ac.uk

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Taking Sides: Good and Bad Moral Panics

At first the answers were couched in terms of the liberal and pluralist model of boundary maintenance and Durkheimian rule clarification. Examples came from the short-lived category of crimes
without victims which, however misguided, brought out basic definitional disputes about deviance such as homosexuality, pornography, drug-taking, gambling and abortion. These were all
subject to contestation even between societies within the liberal consensus. Policing the Crisis
(Hall et al., 1978) took on the highly consensual crime of mugging, and proposed a more hegemonic view of values and a more political view of the context of moral panics. But both versions
took for granted their own antagonism to the values that were being defended by the moral
panics. The increased blurring of the boundaries between crime and politics the politicization of
crime and the criminalization of politics began to complicate life in some unexpected directions.
Thus two criminologists have now explicitly applied the moral panic model to obviously political
phenomena such as the war on terror (Welch, 2006) and the domestic aspects of the United
States war with Iraq (Bonn, 2010). The results of such exercises whatever they may add to our
understanding about terror and warfare certainly bring out the political narrative behind moral
panic theory.
But can anyone on our side find a good, positive or approved moral panic? Jenkins, one of
the few students of moral panic who explicitly poses the question, is also one of the few who
stubbornly stands outside the liberal consensus. He repeats the familiar charge that moral panic
theory ensures (by circular logic) that its claims to objectivity will always sound bogus or exaggerated: Whoever heard of a legitimate panic or of well-founded hysteria? (Jenkins, 2009: 36,
emphasis in original). Cases are still chosen, he claims, because of their suitability for debunking
by liberals. Moral panic is another term of political correctness (a poor argument as there have in
fact been numerous moral panics around child abuse).
Let us take a more nuanced look at this standard criticism. Is there, indeed, something about
the construction of moral panics which is not being openly declared?
The standard critique sees moral panic attribution as a form of libertarian permissiveness, a
tolerance of certain conditions which should surely be condemned. The first wave of new deviancy theory had indeed argued that too much stuff was being criminalized, deviantized or problematized: defining deviance up, as this was later called. But so went the attack the social
anxieties of people directly affected were justified and genuine responses to actual suffering or
future risk. The moral responses by people who are not directly affected but who become involved
are surely normal (or even praiseworthy) and dont deserve such pejorative labels as moral enterprise or media bias just because their zeal might lead to perfectly reasonable mistakes, exaggerations or rhetorical excesses.
A stronger version of the critique traces moral panic theory back to the romantic undertones
of the 1960s. Not only were crimes without victims (a dodgy category itself) to be decriminalized
defining deviance up but these lives (or life styles) were at least viable, at most admirable,
even heroic. This is our first glimpse of an answer to the simplistic question: Whose side are you
on? Unfortunately for those trying to create a moral panic about moral panic theory, this glimpse
of subversion was all they got. According to the narrative of self-correction, critical criminology
now shed its deconstructive impulse and had begun again to take crime more seriously.

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It is true that the eclectic elements in the original discourse symbolic interactionism, libertarian socialism, restorative justice hardly added up to a coherent social policy. Social policy is by
definition interventionist. In the case of crime control policy this usually means creating and
enforcing regulations. These responses make sense only if you have taken the problem seriously.
It is, of course, possible I would say desirable to be sceptical, debunking and deconstructive at
the same time as being interventionist and activist. In the standard narrative, however, the supposed incompatibility between deconstruction and intervention now becomes untenable; therefore the paradigm shifts to left realism and taking crime seriously. The gradual but massive
influence of feminism plus the general discovery of the victim created more loops of denunciation, more rules and regulations, more deviance emotional abuse, hate crime and sexual
harassment are typical examples and hence more moral panics to be identified and studied.

Carry On Panicking
I have no objective baseline nor valid measurements of expansion, but my strong impression is
that, since the mid 1990s, there have been significant increases in (1) the sheer number of new
moral panics (difficult to prove); (2) the publicly registered responses to labelled moral panics (reasonably easily proved by media references, Google counts, and so on); and (3) the rate at which
those moral panics become academic case studies (very easy to prove by such methods as citation
indexes or the number of papers submitted to conferences like this one with titles like Moral
Panics in the Contemporary World). What can be going on behind these increases?
A number of theoretical lines are worth following. In the original version of Folk Devils and
Moral Panics (Cohen, 1972), I used Leslie Wilkinss ingenious adaptation of cybernetic theory to
explain two central matters: (1) how tolerance levels depend on the amount and quality of information about deviance; and (2) how under certain conditions, moral panic led to deviancy amplification an increase in the amount and intensity of deviance. This model was somewhat too
mechanical and deterministic for those of us following the spirit of the 1960s. I stopped trying to
keep track of these ideas which had become increasingly technical and quite disinterested in social
problems.
But the term information society has a resonance and mystique of its own. We can easily see
that changes in information technology and the massive potential of social networks alone would
account for the ease and speed with which the stages of moral panics can be transmitted and
constructed. A more familiar source is the ideological glue which holds the enterprise together.
We can now monitor (even at the international level) the pathways, conflicts, policy options and
turning points in the construction of ideological panics. This applies to the binding and overarching ideologies (religion, communism, environmentalism) as well as to the restricted single issue
(such as a particular violation of medical ethics, an act of extreme sexual violence, or a police
misjudgement).
Links with existing social movements and identity politics have been examined as well as the
politics of individual panics (for example, feminism and sexual violence). There have been fewer
attempts, however, to study groupings according to the content of the panics. Do moral panics
about gender issues share the same political strategies and deep structure as those about race,
ethnicity and immigration? Four subjects are of greatest significance in shaping the current terrain
of moral panics:

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First, there are moral panics inspired by feminism, either directly (in areas such as gender bias,
discrimination, sexist public talk and/or conduct, sexual identity) or indirectly (child abuse, family
violence, trafficking). These have been constant objects of both media-driven and enterprisedriven panics. In such cases ideology either supports or undermines other interests. A recent
example will, I believe, become iconic in its banality. On 21 January 2011, two well-known Sky
Sports football commentators, Andy Gray and Richard Keys, made disparaging and sexist remarks
about a female assistant referee. They hadnt known that, during a break in a live broadcast, the
microphones had been left open by mistake (though not audible to the listening public).
This conversation was leaked to the Daily Mail, immediately sparking off a furore, with the
newspaper appealing to its readers for solidarity in denouncing this sickening sexism. Sky Sports
announced that there would be disciplinary action (fines, suspension) but this was not enough.
More incriminating recordings were leaked. Sky Sports fired the two commentators with immediate effect. The five-day moral micro-panic was over. Recent manoeuvres by and within Rupert
Murdochs media empire suggest aspects of the story other than the feminist consciousness of
Daily Mail readers. The fall-out from the phone-hacking scandal allied with Murdochs desire to
buy up all the shares in BSkyB which he doesnt yet own made him particularly keen to resolve the
issue as soon as possible and in a publicly acceptable way. Most people were content enough with
the Independents conclusion on 25 January 2011 that not only was the prejudice expressed by
Keys and Gray shocking, it also cast grave doubts about their future credibility whenever football
is besieged by something we might describe as a moral crisis (Lawton, 2011). It is rather more
likely that this incipient panic was resolved for reasons which had less to do with morality and
more with market considerations and the volatility of media interest. There are more general
issues about brief or aborted panics; for example, if the moral righteousness that animates their
start-up is so persuasive and sincere, it is hard to see why this fades away so soon. Is it too facile
to see serious issues now surrendered to the aesthetics of Twitter sporadic, mindless and staccato yelps rather than the heavy, doom-laden and protracted howls of the classic moral panic (for
example, when reporting of high immigration figures sparks off a ponderous analysis about the
erosion of British identity in the 20th century).
There were three ideologically driven subjects which had long been waiting for their place on
the historical stage. They needed some permutation of dramaturgical potential, media space, suitable victims, precipitating incident, folk devils in waiting and an appealing narrative. First, there is
corporate crime, especially the issues of accountability, responsibility and cover-up (the Bernie
Madoff icon); second, there are crimes of the state and allied categories or forms: crimes against
humanity, war crimes, genocide, torture (Mugabe, Milosevic, Saddam Hussein a whole gallery
of icons); and third are gross environmental crimes and problems such as pollution, climate change
and its denial (Exxon, BP).
New forms and features of moral panics are already emerging trying to adapt in evolutionarylike style to the new conditions of postmodernity. Here are a few; their final shape is not yet clear.
1. It is easier for us (sociological critics of moral panics) to identify with the kind of moral
entrepreneurs behind new panics than with traditional entrepreneurs. We are closer to
them in social class, education and ideology. Moreover we are more likely to agree with
them about the distinction between moral panic (the problem is taken too seriously) and
denial (the problem is not taken seriously enough).

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2. The alliances between political forces are now more plastic and flexible. Panics about genuine victims (of natural disasters, for example) generate more consensus than uncertain, or
even unworthy, victims such as the homeless.
3. Traditional moral panics are elite engineered. The new panics may not be entirely populist,
but do give more space to social movements, identity politics and victims.
4. Theoretically there can be negative moral panics (the traditional ones that criminologists
so readily detect, expose and criticize) but also positive ones where we approve the values
beyond the panic but not the label itself. It sounds considerably more sensible to talk of
an approved crusade than an approved panic. But this would lose precisely the particular
connotation of panic that one wants to retain!
5. The dominant tone of new panics is no longer non-interventionist. Indeed, more intervention is the (literally) observable index of success, in particular the construction of more laws,
rules, contracts and regulations. The social bases of the new criminalizers (Cohen, 1988)
is surely of interest either (1) they are post-liberals who come from a decriminalizing
generation private morality is not the business of the state, net-widening leads to the
hidden extension of state power, and so on, or (2) they are part of the new right they are
against state power that takes the form of regulation over health, welfare, disease risk,
protection, hate and the environment, but private morality (sexuality, abortion, lifestyles)
should become even more the business of the state. They also have few problems with the
extension of the correctional system.
6. Certain new moral panics can be understood as anti-denial movements. The message is
that the denial cover-up, evasion, normalization, turning a blind eye, tolerance, and so on
of certain social conditions, events and behaviours is morally wrong and politically irrational. Acknowledgement becomes the slogan. The previously denied realities must now be
brought to public attention, their dangers exposed, their immorality denounced.
It is near-impossible to use certain words in a neutral way: passivity, inertia, silence, apathy, indifference, normalization, collusion, cover-up, turning a blind eye, the bystander effect, compassion
fatigue. The opposite of all this is acknowledgement of the truth and acting accordingly. My book
States of Denial (Cohen, 2001) is a study of the workings of denial: the avoidance by individuals
and whole cultures of uncomfortable knowledge, the many states of knowing and not knowing
at the same time.
Let me use climate change denial to illustrate how certain newer features of moral panics
appear in the shell of the old. The rhetoric about climate change draws on the classic moral panic
repertoire: disaster, apocalyptic predictions, warning of what might happen if nothing is done,
placing the problem in wider terms (the future of the planet, no less). The climate change movement tends increasingly to construct any scepticism, doubt, qualification or disagreement as
denial. And they mean not just the passive denial of indifference but also the active work of denialists. Sceptics are indeed folk devils: treated like retarded or crazy persons, people who just dont
get it like flat earthers or who are on the payroll of oil corporations. Some entrepreneurs have
suggested that climate change denial should become a crime like Holocaust denial; deniers should
be brought before a Nuremberg-style court and made responsible for the thousands of deaths
that will happen if the global warming alarm is not heeded.

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These apocalyptic visions are too extreme to be taken very seriously by the sociology of moral
panics. Climate change (and the whole Green movement) is, however, of special interest to us
because of the pervasive presence of the ideology in mundane settings (home, school, media and
workplace). In these settings, the good citizen has to conform to regimes of behaviour control
(recycling, energy saving, diet) which are not onerous in themselves but which demand a monopoly in what constitutes ethical living. But important as environmental issues will be as potential
sites for moral panics, I believe that the most important site will be anything connected with
immigration, migrants, multicultural absorption, refugees, border controls and asylum seekers.
This subject is more political, more edgy and more amenable to violence. Note also how much
more politically ambiguous and intellectually difficult these new subjects can be. What, for example, do we think about women wearing the burkha? Why is the French legal ban on wearing the
burkha seen by some multiculturists as a victory, by others as a defeat?
But instead of such ad hoc comparisons, I agree with Critcher (2009: 30) that we need a prior
criterion or typology. Critcher sees moral panic as an extreme form of moral regulation with its
own conceptual category. He identifies three dimensions of discursive construction for distinguishing between forms of moral regulation or between regulation and panic. Imagine ranking
(high/medium/low) each of the following dimensions: (1) the perceived threat to moral order
posed by an issue; (2) the extent to which it is seen to be amenable to social control; and (3) how
far it invites ethical self-formation.
The Conferences initial call for papers resulted in 175 being submitted, 111 of which were
accepted.1 Some of these were general theoretical papers for plenary sessions, others mixed
empirical data and theory. In the end, some 7580 papers were presented, each about its own
moral panic. My rough estimate is that 120 sets of moral panic (some single discrete cases, others
in bundles of similar subjects) are now being studied at PhD level and above in British
universities.
What did they do before we came along to study them?

Note
1. Thanks to Amanda Rohloff for this information, and for her other help.

References
Bonn, S.A. (2010) Mass Deception: Moral Panic and the US War on Iraq. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers
University Press.
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Cohen, S. (1988) The object of criminology: Some reflections on the new criminalization. In: Against Criminology. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 235276.
Cohen, S. (2001) States of Denial: Knowing About Atrocities and Suffering. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Cohen, S. (2002) Moral panics as cultural politics. In: Folk Devils and Moral Panics (3rd ed.). Routledge:
London, viixliv.
Critcher, C. (2009) Widening the focus: Moral panics as moral regulation. Moral Panics 36 Years On,
Special Edition of British Journal of Criminology 49(1): 1734.
Garland, D. (2008) On the concept of moral panic. Crime, Media, Culture 4(1): 930.

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Hall, S., Critcher, C., Jefferson, T., Clarke, J. and Roberts, B. (1978) Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State,
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Brunswick NJ: Rutgers University Press.

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