Identifying Moral Panic: The Discourse of Fear in Social Policy
- ISBN-10
- 0871015773
- ISBN-13
- 9780871015778
- Category
- Moral panics
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2022
- Author
- Michael H. Eversman
Description
"In this book, the framework of moral panic is used to study social welfare policy and what it tells us about society: our values and symbols, our prejudices, fears, and contradictions, who has power and who is deviant, who gets helped and who gets controlled. The framework of moral panic helps informs critical analysis of macro level dynamics, showing us that the power of policymaking in defining truth and reinforcing inequalities rooted in "otherism." The book's goal is to provide readers with an overview of key historic and contemporary American social welfare policies while using moral panic theory to illuminate socio-political dynamics that ultimately lead to policies that weaken social justice and create harsher conditions for vulnerable populations. Highly relevant to social workers and the populations they serve, the book seeks to enable readers to recognize the discourses of moral panic as they are constructed in various social and policymaking spheres, foster greater awareness of media functions and media literacy, and to encourage critical understanding of social problems. In addition to serving as a core social policy text, the book also teaches the importance of social justice to the mission of professional social work and reminds us of the need to stay vigilant amidst a seemingly timeless spate of state-sanctioned oppressive policies. As the usual suspect "folk devils," young people, public assistance recipients, immigrants, LGBTQ individuals, the mentally ill, and illicit drug users have long served as repositories of societal fears and their behavior the raw materials of moral panic; to this end the book addresses these matters as both timely and timeless concerns for professional social workers. Early chapters establish a foundational understanding of moral panic by elucidating its key component ideas in relation to macro level social and policymaking processes. The remaining chapters provide an overview of six distinct social welfare policy arenas relevant to social work (welfare and poverty, youth and childhood, immigration, sex and sexuality, mental illness, and illicit drugs) by providing a concise background of government and societal trends and developments, and then explore three distinct periods in contemporary US history to demonstrate the dynamics of moral panic as a recurring trope"--
