Keeping it clean: Graffiti and the commodification of a moral panic

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-92
Author(s):  
Erik Hannerz ◽  
Jacob Kimvall
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Moral Panic ◽  
Moral Panics ◽  
The Past ◽  
Reliable Source ◽  
Contemporary Work ◽  
Youth Resistance ◽  
Graffiti Removal ◽  
Moral Entrepreneurs

Whereas subcultures such as punk, metal, skate, goth and emo have all been the target of moral panics in the past, the conditions that sparked these moral panics have since become banal and normalized, in line with Stanley Cohen’s claim that moral panics per definition tend to be short-lived. The moral panic about subcultural graffiti in Sweden, however, has proved remarkably consistent. Drawing from contemporary work on moral panics as extreme forms of more mundane moral regulations, this article deals with graffiti as mal placé in relation to both urban space and romanticized conceptions of youth resistance, rendering it not only a suitable enemy for moral entrepreneurs but also a reliable source of income for surveillance and graffiti-removal firms. Whereas the previous subcultural research has discussed moral panics as a first step of the commodification of the subcultural (<xref ref-type="bibr" rid="CIT0037">Williams 2011</xref>), the authors use the example of graffiti in Stockholm to point to a commodification, not so much of subcultural style, but of the moral panic itself.

Moral panics by design: The case of terrorism

2016 ◽  
Vol 65 (5) ◽  
pp. 643-662 ◽  
Author(s):  
James P Walsh
Keyword(s):  
Social Control ◽  
Political Change ◽  
Moral Panic ◽  
Moral Panics ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Fear And Anxiety ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Moral Entrepreneurs

This article assesses the relationship between terrorism and moral panics to expand understandings of the latter’s eruption and orchestration. Answering calls for deeper considerations of folk devils’ agentic properties, it interrogates how terrorist methods – the deployment of shocking and exceptional violence to incite fear and stimulate political change – challenge extant understandings of the moral panic framework. Specifically, it argues, in the case of terrorism, that the exaggerated threats and disproportionate responses that define moral panics are not driven solely by moral entrepreneurs or social control agents, but are informed by the strategic practices and rationalities of folk devils themselves. Through its approach, this research enhances social-scientific treatments of terrorism, broadens the scope of moral panic analysis, and extends understandings of how fear and anxiety are manipulated for political purposes.

Prawne regulacje pobierania i transplantacji narządów oraz tkanek w ujęciu europejskiej konwencji bioetycznej

2016 ◽  
pp. 52-65
Author(s):  
Patryk Kołodyński ◽  
Paulina Drab
Keyword(s):  
Ex Vivo ◽  
Legal Aspects ◽  
European Convention ◽  
The Public ◽  
Additional Protocol ◽  
The Past ◽  
Reliable Source ◽  
International Legal Order ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Source Of Information

Over the past several years, transplantology has become one of the fastest developing areas of medicine. The reason is, first and foremost, a significant improvement of the results of successful transplants. However, much controversy arouse among the public, on both medical and ethical grounds. The article presents the most important concepts and regulations relating to the collection and transplantation of organs and tissues in the context of the European Convention on Bioethics. It analyses the convention and its additional protocol. The article provides the definition of transplantation and distinguishes its types, taking into account the medical criteria for organ transplants. Moreover, authors explained the issue of organ donation ex vivo and ex mortuo. The European Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine clearly regulates the legal aspects concerning the transplantation and related basic concepts, and therefore provides a reliable source of information about organ transplantation and tissue. This act is a part of the international legal order, which includes the established codification of bioethical standards.

Covid-19 Pandemic and the World Order

2021 ◽  
pp. 8-24
Author(s):  
Elena Chebankova ◽  
Petr Dutkiewicz
Keyword(s):  
Political System ◽  
Moral Panic ◽  
World Order ◽  
Potential Outcomes ◽  
Capitalist System ◽  
The Past ◽  
Power Resources ◽  
Ideological Struggle ◽  
The World ◽  
Media Manipulation

This paper examines the origins, nature, and potential outcomes of the global crisis induced by the Covid-19 pandemic. The authors argue that the crisis has been animated by the two most important groups of factors that have been simmering in the world‘s economic and political system during the past six decades and have been accelerated by the pandemic. First, the dynamic of the Covid-19 crisis illuminated the existing challenges of the contemporary capitalist system, which is generally legitimated via the instruments of moral panic and media manipulation. Each consecutive crisis of capitalism ends with the redistribution of power resources to some groups of participants. Second, the Covid-19 crisis has been taking place within the conditions of a systemic and ideological struggle between two global elite factions that harbour drastically different approaches to the changing world order and have different politico-economic goals and intentions. The authors will argue that the crisis will not change the world drastically, yet it will amplify these ongoing tensions, illuminate them to many general observers, and deepen the already-existing systemic instability.

scholarly journals US Moral Panics, Mexican Politics, and the Borderlands Origins of the War on Drugs, 1950–62

2018 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 364-387
Author(s):  
Benjamin T. Smith ◽  
Wil G. Pansters
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Drug Policy ◽  
Moral Panic ◽  
War On Drugs ◽  
Moral Panics ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Temporary Closure ◽  
Mexican Politics

During the 1950s Californian civil society advocates and politicians developed a moral panic over youth narcotic use. One of the key elements of this moral panic was the assertion that most drugs came over the border and that the only solution to this problem was blackmailing Mexico through temporary closure of the border. The idea not only became a tenet of later drug policy, but also, in conjunction with pressure from Mexico’s own moral reformers, forced regional politicians in Mexico to enact periodic clean up campaigns.

scholarly journals ‘Do We Look like Boy Racers?’ The Role of the Folk Devil in Contemporary Moral Panics

2009 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Lumsden
Keyword(s):  
Moral Panic ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Moral Panics ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Young Drivers ◽  
The Media ◽  
Collective Process ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Societal Reaction

This article addresses the failure of studies concerning moral panics to take into account the reaction of those individuals who are the subject of social anxiety. It responds to the suggestion by McRobbie and Thornton (1995) that studies of moral panic need to account for the role played by the ‘folk devils’ themselves, for a moral panic is a collective process (Young, 2007). The paper presents findings from ethnographic fieldwork with the ‘boy racer’ culture in Aberdeen, qualitative interviews with members of outside groups, and content analysis of media articles. The societal reaction to the ‘boy racer’ subculture in Aberdeen is evidence of a contemporary moral panic. The media's representation of the subculture contributed to the stigmatization of young drivers and the labelling of the subculture's activities as deviant and antisocial. The drivers were aware of their negative portrayal in the media; however their attempts to change the myth of the ‘boy racer’ were unsuccessful. Although subcultural media can provide an outlet of self-expression for youths, these forms of media can also become caught-up in the moral panic. Ironically the youths’ own niche and micro media reified the (ir)rationality for the moral panic.

scholarly journals The city in Soviet Lithuanian cinema

Menotyra ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ilona Vitkauskaitė
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Collective Consciousness ◽  
The Past ◽  
Living Space ◽  
Feature Films ◽  
Urban Representations ◽  
Artistic Interpretation ◽  
Mother Figures ◽  
The City

The article analyzes urban representations of Soviet-era Lithuanian cinema. Like any other object of reality, the city in cinema is a secondary reality, the fruit of artistic interpretation. At the same time, images of the city in film can reflect individual and collective consciousness of the period. The analysis of urban space of Lithuanian feature cinema reveals that cinematographic space can be treated as a composite construct, which creates and represents projections of identities and feelings, reflects demands, ideas, cinema fashions of its time and “hides” real sociocultural and sociopolitical discourses. Most of Soviet-style feature films much easier incorporate countryside spaces, images, landscapes and lifestyle. Meanwhile the city often not only creates an impression of a claustrophobic space, but even looks very decorative. It seems that most of filmmakers can’t identify cities with their own, Lithuanian, national living space. In search of identity or inspiration they turn to idealized village, agrarian culture and its images. Therefore, the city of Soviet Lithuanian cinema is more likely to become a space of collapsed hopes, prison, ideological repressive space, which is stuck between the present and the past. Filmmakers, like their characters, run to the shelter of nature, the mythologized, well-decorated farmstead, where archetypal father and mother figures or a calm, meditative landscape await. It seems that movie characters (and filmmakers), who have escaped from the socialist reality and its challenges to the landscapes of nature and village, have never returned.

scholarly journals Cultural Memory and Urban Space in Shaping Cultural Identity

2019 ◽  
pp. 160-183
Author(s):  
Valentyna Bohatyrets ◽  
Liubov Melnychuk
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
Historical Archives ◽  
City Space ◽  
New Type ◽  
The City ◽  
Historic Cities

Nowadays, in the age of massive spatial transformations in the built environment, cities witness a new type of development, different in size, scale and momentum that has been thriving since late 20th century. Diverse transformation of historic cities under modernisation has led to concerns in terms of the space and time continuity disintegration and the preservation of historic cities. In a similar approach, we can state that city and city space do not only consist of present, they also consist of the past; they include the transformations, relations, values, struggles and tensions of the past. As it could be defined, space is the history itself. Currently, we would like to display how Chernivtsi cultural and architectural heritage is perceived and maintained in the course of its evolution. Noteworthy, Chernivtsi city is speculated a condensed human existence and vibes, with public urban space and its ascriptions are its historical archives and sacred memory. Throughout the history, CHERNIVTSI’s urban landscape has changed, while preserving its unique and distinctive spirit of diversity, multifacetedness and tolerance. The city squares of the Austrian, Romanian and Soviet epochs were crammed with statuary of royal elites and air of aristocracy, soviet leaders and a shade of patriotic obsession, symbolic animals and sacred piety – that eventually shaped its unique “Bukovynian supranational identity”. Keywords: Chernivtsi, cultural memory, memory studies, monuments, squares, identity.

scholarly journals Cannabis, Moral Entrepreneurship, and Stigma: Conflicting Narratives on the 26 May 2016 Toronto Police Raid on Cannabis Shops

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 148-171
Author(s):  
Thaddeus Müller
Keyword(s):  
Media Coverage ◽  
Moral Panic ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Social World ◽  
State Agencies ◽  
Social Constructions ◽  
Moral Panics ◽  
The Media ◽  
Police Raid ◽  
Do So

On May 26, 2016, the police raided 43 cannabis dispensaries in Toronto, Canada, making 90 arrests. This article aims to describe the narrative of the responsible state agencies concerning the police raid and compare it to the narrative of those who opposed it, such as activists, as well as consumers and sellers of cannabis. While such concepts as moral entrepreneur, moral panic, and moral crusade have traditionally been used to study those in power, I will employ them to explore both the state narrative and ways in which counterclaims-makers resisted it. In order to do so, I will further develop the concept of moral entrepreneurship and its characteristics by relating it to studies of moral panics and social problems. This article will be guided by the following question: How did each party socially construct its cannabis narrative, and in what way can we use the concept of moral entrepreneurship to describe and analyze these narratives as social constructions? I have investigated the media coverage of the raid and ethnographically studied shops in Toronto in order to study the narratives. My findings show that both parties used a factual neutral style, as well as a dramatizing style. The later includes such typical crusading strategies as constructing victims and villains and presenting the image of a dystopian social world. In order to explain the use of these strategies, we will relate them to the shifting wider social and historical context and to the symbolic connotation of cannabis shops in Toronto in particular and in Canada as a whole.

Sex and the Devil: Homosexuality, Satanism, and Moral Panic in Late Apartheid South Africa

2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 273-293 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicky Falkof
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Moral Panic ◽  
White Male ◽  
White Men ◽  
Control Measures ◽  
The Other ◽  
Moral Panics ◽  
Sanitation And Hygiene ◽  
The Devil ◽  
Male Homosexuals

This article discusses the discursive and narrative intersections between two moral panics that appeared in the white South African press in the last years of apartheid: the first around the claimed danger posed by white male homosexuals, the second around the alleged incursion of a criminal cult of white Satanists. This connection was sometimes implicit, when the rhetoric attached to one was repeated with reference to the other, and sometimes explicit, when journalists and moral entrepreneurs conflated the two in public dialogue. Both Satanists and gay white men were characterized as indulging in abnormal practices that were dangerous to the health of the nation, using a long-standing colonial metaphor of sanitation and hygiene. I argue that fears of homosexuality and beliefs in Satanism operated as social control measures for disciplining potentially unruly groups whose sexual or personal practices were not admissible within apartheid’s injunctions on homogenous conformity among whites. The connection between homosexuality and Satanism, like the connection between homosexuality and communism, served to pathologize whites whose disobedient bodies and beliefs were considered treacherous.

Reliability of the Plot Related to the Conversation with Deng Xiaoping on the Sino-Soviet Territorial Issues in the Memoirs of E. Shevardnadze

2021 ◽  
pp. 135
Author(s):  
Yinan Li
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Good Reason ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Foreign Affairs ◽  
Deng Xiaoping ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Reliable Source ◽  
History Of ◽  
Territorial Claims

In 2009, the former Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR and President of Georgia E.A. Shevardnadze published his memoirs in Russian, which contain an “explosive” plot: while visiting China in February 1989, during his meeting with Deng Xiaoping, a lengthy dispute over border and territorial issues occurred. At that time, Deng allegedly expressed his point of view that vast lands of the Soviet Union, from three to four million square kilometers, belonged to China. Chinese can wait patiently until someday the lands return to China. This content is cited in scientific works by many historians from different countries as an argument. However, there is no other evidence which can prove this recollection. Many details in it contradict the well known historical facts or are completely illogical. There is a good reason to believe that the plot in the memoirs of Shevardnadze is an incorrect recollection. It could even be considered as a made-up story. Moreover, it is possible that it was fabricated for some reasons. Hence, the plot is not worthy of being quoted as a reliable source. At the Sino-Soviet summit Deng Xiaoping did have expressed the point of view that in the past Russia and then the Soviet Union cut off millions of square kilometers of land from China, but at the same time he promised the leader of the Soviet Union that China would not make territorial claims. Since the mid-1980s Deng Xiaoping actively promoted the settlement of the Sino-Soviet border issues through negotiations, which led to the result that 99% of the border between Russia and China was delimited on a legal basis in the last years of his life. At present, the problems of the Sino-Russian border have been finally resolved long ago. There is no doubt that the scientific research and discussions on issues related to territory and borders in the history of Sino-Soviet relations can be made. However, such research and discussions should be based on reliable sources.

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