Amoral Panics

Amoral Panics Synopsis

The concept 'moral panic' is one of the few sociological categories that has become popularised, used still as a basis for sociological teaching and research, but also more widely, employed as a challenge in the media to criticise anxieties and issues that appear to be exaggerated, irrational and reactionary. But how useful is this concept, a concept developed by left wing British sociologists at a time when 'left and right' and 'radical and conservative' sentiments, ideas, issues and values clearly dominated public life? Amoral Panics situates the rise of moral panics in their particular historical period in order to illustrate that the nature of modern day panics is very different. Owing to the decline of the idea of 'morality' in popular and media discourses and the rise of notions of moral relativism, modern panics are the results not of an attempt to enforce values onto society, but are rather the outcome of a collapse of values and meaning, As such, modern panics are led by an administrative, cosmopolitan elite seeking to limit and control behaviour through regulative and legislative processes in the name of risk, notions of safety or 'awareness', or confused concepts of 'tolerance', with direct references to morality being made only in certain, specific cases. A ground-breaking study of the replacement of radical and liberal thought with regulation, Amoral Panics raises major questions about Western values and what it means to be 'moral' in contemporary society.