Contenu du sommaire : Paniques et croisades morales

In the early 1980s, a powerful campaign erupted in the United Kingdom which sought to control the production and circulation of pre-recorded videos. In this essay I reconsider the campaign in the light of subsequent debates. Three major paradigms have emerged for understanding campaigns such as this : moral panics ; claims-making ; and risk-management. These three approaches are tested via a re-examination of the video nasties campaign centres, for three unresolved issues : 1. whether analysts should simply seek to describe media scares, or need also to take sides, publicly ; 2. whether we should see media scares as naturally-occurring expressions of tensions, or as purposive attempts to increase levels of emotional response ; 3. how we address the status of claims-makers' public discourses, and their relations with their “private” intentions. From this account, the essays draws several lessons for researchers : (1) the need to research conflicts between declared and actual motives, private and public rhe­torics ; (2) the need to be alert to the cynical management of public presentation, in order to ensure appropriate level of panic ; and (3) the dependence of such campaigns on avoiding the kinds of critical questions which activists are inclined to ask.

The events which led to the imposition of state video censorship in the UK in 1984 are frequently described as constituting a moral panic. However, with the exception of Critcher (2003) these events have never actually been analysed in the light of moral panic theory, and this article attempts this task in much greater detail than Critcher, whose concerns go beyond this particular panic about videos. The article shows how concerns about the new medium of home video were first expressed in the press in May 1982, and details the first prosecutions of videos under the Obscene Publications Act in August of that year. The arti­cle explains the role of moral entrepreneurs such as Mary Whitehouse and politicians of all parties in helping to create this particular panic, but its main focus is on the role played by the national press in amplifying the panic and creating a signification spiral in which the alleged threat posed by the so-called “video nasties” was constantly escalated, as well as converged with other apparent threats to the social order. The result was an increasingly strident campaign for firm legislative measures to be taken. The article argues that the events which led to the passing of the Video Recordings Act (1984) need to be understood as a process of communication involving a deviance-defining elite of politicians, moral entrepreneurs and censorious newspapers, a process from which the public itself was largely absent, constant press invocations of “public opinion” notwithstanding.

Much of the research done on the incrimination of medias as danger sources have used the conceptual framework of moral panic. In this article, we will show that the concept was misused to indicate what amounted to moral crusading and that the confusion between “panic” and “crusade” contributes to misunderstanding the problem. Based on two empirical examples (the French campaign against graphic novels from the 1930's to the 1950's and the British campaign against comic books shortly after world war II) we will see how pressure groups militated for years for laws prohibiting, censuring, controlling or regulating those objects. Subsequently, despite the confusion between “panic” and “crusade”, we will consider these invaluable research works for three reasons : they contribute nuances in studying the effects of medias, they establish the recurrence of accusations against various medias and they focus on the stakes latent in those accusations. Finally, we will insist on the importance of studying the recurrence of discourses for sociology.

This essay considers the relevance of the idea of moral panic to a frequently repeated lament for the supposed “decline of the family meal”. It proceeds by first recapitulating earlier discussion (Murcott, 1997) of the supposition, second by bringing that discussion up to date. Noteworthy is the durability of that lament and of the range of practitioners and activists who report and repeat it. Although suitable data sets are in short supply, some social scientific research has relatively recently been devoted to examining the historical accuracy of the decline of the family meal, and find at best equivocal support for its disappear­ance. Despite the inadequacy or absence of evidence for any decline, the lament persists, revealing the lament as a possible exaggeration. The paper's final section reviews the relevance of moral panic in relation to the persisting lament in respect of the seven features of the notion presented by Garland (2008). On this basis, the article concludes that, despite claims by Jackson et al. (2009) of the relevance of moral panic to the lament, it is only partly so.

Analysed by Edgar Morin and his team in the work of the same name, the celebrated rumour of Orleans (1969) is cited by Goode and Ben-Yehuda (2009) as the example par excellence of a spontaneous moral panic. Using sources neglected by Morin, we show that he failed to take into account the probable potential impact of campaigns against the trafficking of women carried out for decades by many associations, on both a national and international level. Hence we conclude that if this unique example (for Goode and Ben-Yehuda) of truly spontaneous moral panic should rather be understood as the unintended result of a moral crusade, we are led to think that no moral panic can occur without a moral crusade preceding it. So we feel that moral panic studies should be included within the broader field of research devoted to moral crusades. De facto, that is what many moral panic analysts are already doing, taking the alarmist talk of the moral entrepreneurs as their target object rather than the supposed panicky reactions of significant segments of the populations they are addressed to. Finally, it is a matter of aligning declared goals with effective practices.