Conceptualizing Moral Panic through a Moral Economy of Harm
Abstract
This paper explicates a critical theory of moral panic, arguing that there is an affinity to be discerned between the sociology of moral panic and the sociology of moral regulation. It is demonstrated how efforts to distance sociological investigations of moral regulation from studies of moral panic have been founded on a narrow treatment of the ways in which the latter have conceptualized panics uncritically as irrational societal overreactions stemming from some variant of `social anxiety.' Advocating a conceptualization which attends to the complexity of ways in which human conduct is governed, explanatory importance is situated in Valverde's formulation of `moral capital,' showing how her model not only enables a fusion between a political economy of the state and ethical subjectivity, but more crucial between panics and regulatory projects through the production of a moral economy of harm.
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1.
1 Contrary to Cohen's argument that societies are subject to periodic episodes of moral panic, McRobbie and Thornton (1995) contend that moral panics have become a central means by which daily events are reported and brought to the attention of the public. With an exceptionally high rate of turnover, they suggest that the propensity for panic narratives to accumulate has not served purposes of `social control' per se, but has additionally assumed the form of routine marketing strategies which, amongst other things, are geared towards youth transgression. What this implies for McRobbie and Thornton is that `...a tabloid front page is frequently a self-fulfi lling prophesy. Sociologists might rightly see this in terms of `deviance amplification,' but youth have their own discourses which see the process as one in which see the process as one in which a `scene' is transformed into a movement (p. 565).
2.
2 It is in this regard that the critical approach operates at considerable distance from the epistemological underpinnings of structuralism. Concerned to elaborate Marx's conception of ideology and the state, for example, Louis Althusser theorized a compelling evidentness about ideology as an object demanding of total assent — `ideology,' Althusser (1971:164) maintained, `is always already there.' He argued that the evidentness of ideology operates as an instrument which serves to conceal from the subject the imaginary character of his/her relations to the object of experience. What this signified for Althusser was that there exists an eternal, omni-present character to ideology, and it is this insistence which serves to eclipse his otherwise instructive commentary on subjectivity and subjectification where a critical conception of ideology is concerned. Put simply, caught up in a broader concern to comprehend how relations of domination are reproduced, he insisted that the actor must be reconciled to class structure and to the position s/he has come to occupy in that structure. Whilst not without merit, what is of interest to a critical formulation is how ideology actually becomes internalized, lived and acted upon.
3.
3 The notion of interpellation — an interpellative hailing — was used by Althusser to refer to the processes whereby individuals are constituted as subjects by the mere presence of ideology — ideology as always already there. For present purposes, usage of the concept is oriented towards understanding how a set of discourses serve to constitute subjectivities in ongoing, developmental, interactive ways, based on wider ideological assumptions about the ontology of the material world. In this sense, interpellation does not passively `hail' subjects, but rather `invites' individuals to actively and imaginatively decode the contents and meanings of fragmented, fl uid, complex discourses embedded with multiple meanings. Hence, interpellation is formulated here as the processes by which individuals are addressed and constituted as subjects through their emotional connectedness to a specific discourse, and the ways in which discourses confront indiivduals with the realization that the issue at hand will carry real life, material consequences.
4.
4 Neither is this to imply that the active reader is a resistant one, nor that an active reading implies some form of subversion. How reporting is framed, whose points of view are predominant, page layouts and the manner in which news stories unfold are among the many important factors involved in producing an ideological effect. Indicative of the latter is Welch, Fenwick and Roberts' (1997) work on crime and moral panic, where attention is directed towards the importance of primary definers in the construction of news text and how experts and state managers contribute to the consolidation of dominant ideology, not through conspiratorial relations, but based on the media's reliance on primary definers as a product of the structure of news reporting itself. More recently, Greenberg and Hier (2001) have taken up the issue of how news reporting is structured in the context of moral panic, arguing that privileging of dominant viewpoints is not based on a dominant group's structural position as gatekeepers of specialized knowledge so much as it is on their overall accessibility and the mere fact that the very essence of their positions as politicians, police personal, etc. facilitates the material demands imposed upon the newsmaking process itself — deadlines, constant turnover, quoting sources, etc. But where their analysis differs is in the fact that they advocate a `dualistic' framework, whereby the contents and structure of news are analysed alongside the style of reporting. Hence they explore the discursive and rhetorical patterns of news coverage using the technique of critical discourse analysis within the more general parameters of structural analysis. In this way, the interpretive aspects of news text are considered alongside the structural aspects of reporting to approximate more fully an understanding of how interpellation works.
5.
5 McRobbie and Thornton (1995) argue that with the diversification of the mass, niche and micro media — fl yers, fanzines, pirate radio, internet web sites, email distribution lists — the relationship between media reporting, folk devils and social control is far more complex than traditional formulations allow for, as folk devils can and do fi ght back. Using empirical data to substantiate McRobbie and Thornton's theoretical claims, Hier (2002) has recently demonstrated how folk devils are able to engage a diversity of media outlets (niche television, internet, music outlets) to challenge and subvert dominant claims-making in a highly differentiated public sphere centered on the notion of rational-critical debate and victim-centered discourses.
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