SOC313H1 Chapter : Deviance and Moral Panics Article. SOC313H1 Professor Frederick
Document Summary
Moral panic: a condition, episode, person, or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests -> the media perpetuates this belief -> The morals behind it are championed by those with social influence -> social experts produce diagnoses and solutions -> coping mechanisms are evolved or resorted to -> the condition disappears and becomes more visible. Example of a moral panic is the emergence of deviant or delinquent youth culture in. Becker s moral enterprise: the creation of a new fragment of the moral constitution of society -> done through a symbolic crusade mounted by interest groups through the use of moral panics. The sociological study of deviance has turned from a canonical (saw the concepts it worked with as authoritative, standard, accepted, given, unquestionable) view to a skeptical view. Skeptical in the sense that when it sees terms like deviant , it asks deviant to whom? or deviant from what? .
