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The Development of the Moral Panic Concept

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Abstract

Documents the emergence of the concept of moral panic via Cohen’s (Folk devils and moral panics, Paladin, Hertz, 1972) Folk devils and moral panics, Hall et al.’s (Policing the crisis: Mugging, the state, and law and order, MacMillan, London, 1978) Policing the crisis and Good and Ben-Yehuda’s (1994) Moral panics: The social construction of deviance. These three studies are the foundational studies which make up the ‘original project’ of panic. This chapter traces how each of the studies developed conceptual and theoretical understandings of panic from empirical data and argues that a transferable panic concept remains valuable, but that researchers need to move on from ‘ticking off’ stages and criteria.

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Correspondence to Sarah Wright Monod .

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Wright Monod, S. (2017). The Development of the Moral Panic Concept. In: Making Sense of Moral Panics. Palgrave Studies in Risk, Crime and Society. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61821-0_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61821-0_2

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-61820-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-61821-0

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