British Journal of Criminology Advance Access originally published online on November 11, 2008
British Journal of Criminology 2009 49(1):4-16; doi:10.1093/bjc/azn074
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The British Journal of Criminology 49:4-16 (2009)
© The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies (ISTD). All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org
Moral Panic
Its Origins in Resistance, Ressentiment and the Translation of Fantasy into Reality
* Distinguished Professor of Criminal Justice, Graduate Center, City University of New York, and Professor of Sociology, University of Kent, UK; PhD Program, John Jay College, CUNY, 899 10th Ave., New York, NY 11215, USA, jyoung{at}jjay.cuny.edu.
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Abstract |
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This paper addresses: the origins of moral panic in the New Deviancy Theory of the 1960s, particularly in the work of Albert Cohen and his notion of moral indignation which is rooted in the Nietzschian concept of Ressentiment; the emergence of the concept in the tumult of 1968 and in the intellectual context of the National Deviancy Conference; the key attributes of moral panic as arising out of fundamental changes in social structure and culture; and issues of moral disturbance because of conflicts in values. It concludes with a critique of recent uses of the concept and a reformulation of the notions of moral disturbance, disproportionality, displacement and volatility.