Tightening the focus: moral panic, moral regulation and liberal government

The purpose of this article is to tighten the focus of moral panic studies by clarifying and elaborating on an analytical framework that conceptualizes moral panic as a form of moral regulation. The first part of the article explains why moral panic should be conceptualized as a form of moral regulation. The second part presents a rejoinder to Critcher's (2009) critique of the widening focus of moral panic studies. The third part elaborates on the conceptual relationship between the sociologies of moral panic and moral regulation by offering fresh insights into the sociological and political importance of moral panic as a technique of liberal government.     

Cultural Discourse in Action: Interactional Dynamics and Symbolic Meaning

Cultural sociology has recently developed new tools with which to understand and analyze meaning in terms of cultural discourse. Specifically, this paper further develops the Alexanderian form of discourse analysis through application on the micro-level. Utilizing extensive ethnographic data, the mythopoetic men's movement is examined in terms of how its participants construct political meaning that motivates and guides their action. In empirical detail, these actors can be seen as creating a cultural discourse that constitutes the social movement at a fundamental level while at the same time the discourse is continually negotiated, contested, and reconfigured. Exposed is the “discourse of liberational masculinity” which is used by movement participants to challenge and confront hegemonic masculinity in American society. Examining the mythopoetic men's movement from this perspective demonstrates the analytic utility of this approach through revealing in unique ways the dynamics of morality, political belief, and perceived hegemony within this popular contemporary social movement.     

Market returns? Gender and theories of change in employment relations

This paper explores recent arguments about the marketization of female labour, in the context of a wider analysis of the role of concepts like 'the market' and 'individualization' in sociological accounts of change in employment relations. It will be argued that within sociology there has been a tendency for rapid, large-scale changes in employment relations to be characterized as the breakdown of social influences or structures and as the emergence of atomized, individuated market forces. In the most recent models, change in the nature of gendered positions within employment are presented in terms of a decline of social structuring and social constraint. These emergent accounts hold similarities to classical economics, and to Marx's and Weber's accounts of employment, which also characterized new forms of employment relations in terms of the emptying of their social content and their replacement by market forms. We offer an alternative, moral economy, perspective which foregrounds the continued significance of social relations in the structuring of employment and employment change. We develop the argument through an analysis of gendered patterns of employment and change in family form.     

Moral voices of politically engaged urban youth

The relationship between reflection and action is an enduring question for those interested in promoting moral development among young people. Educators struggle to find effective methods for helping youth reason carefully about moral problems and also to show moral commitment in their everyday lives. One place where reflection and action come together is in youth activism, where young people engage in social action campaigns to improve their schools and communities. What are the moral concerns that urban youth raise when given the opportunity? How do these concerns get translated into action? Drawing on original and secondary sources, this chapter discusses four social action campaigns organized by youth in the San Francisco Bay Area, in which youth combined critical moral judgments with social action. The chapter is not an empirical study, but instead an effort to bring attention to the moral and ethical perspectives that politically engaged youth raise. These social action projects suggest that for youth living in low-income neighborhoods with limited resources, the capacity for critical moral reflection about one's surroundings is an important dimension of healthy development. Helping youth assess and transform their local environments represents a promising direction for moral education and youth development.     

Telling Others How You Live—Refining Goffman's Stigma Theory Through an Analysis of Housing Strugglers in a Homeowner Nation

This article revisits Goffman's stigma theory from the perspective of housing studies. We elaborate on Goffman's approach by exploring how housing tenure can work as a proxy for moral character. We interviewed twenty‐seven people who are excluded from access to homeownership in two cities in Norway, which is a “homeowner nation.” These individuals are unable to enter the dominant “homeowner class” for different reasons, including drug‐dependency, mental illness, refugee background, low socioeconomic status; thus, they must access housing through other tenures; private renting or social housing. To many of them, housing becomes a stigma, in Goffman terms, an “undesired differentness.” Social housing is known to carry stigma in Norway. It was thus a paradox, that those with the softest differentness—private rental—were most likely to practice (Goffman:) “information control” over their housing situation. Goffman's theoretical apparatus, and his distinction between the discreditable and the discredited in particular, helped us make this paradox comprehensible. Through this analysis, refinements to Goffman's theory were discovered. We suggest that “multiple stigmas,” which was not seen clearly by Goffman himself, should be a key notion in stigma studies. We use this notion to distinguish between possible sub‐types to the discredited‐discreditable distinction.     

Moral education as intercultural moral education

In a diverse country such as Peru, moral education should reflect social, cultural, political and spiritual dilemmas of both indigenous and non-indigenous peoples and their communities. To promote understanding and respect amongst people from different sociocultural backgrounds, moral education should encourage a dialogue between indigenous values and mainstream hegemonic values. In this article, we argue for the need to conceptualise moral education as intercultural. Against a common view that portraits indigenous people as incommensurable, that is, as trapped in their own radically different moral perspective, our own research in Shipibo-Konibo and Asháninka communities show that indigenous people display a moral point of view when analysing cultural traditions and practices. This moral point of view appears intertwined with their cultural values and ethnic identities and allows intercultural dialogue. In this vein, we argue for the need to incorporate intercultural moral conflicts and dilemmas into moral education to promote understanding and respect for others.     

Moral Reflexivity and Dramaturgical Action in Social Movement Activism: The Case of the Plowshares and Animal Rights Sweden

Drawing on Durkheim's sociology of morality, which identifies ideals and norms as the key components of morality, this article outlines a theoretical model for understanding how social movements can bring about legitimate social change. Social movement activists, we propose, can be conceptualized as followers and pursuers of sacred ideals. As such, they frequently come into conflict with existing norms in society. To manage this dilemma, activists must downplay their role as norm breakers while emphasizing their identity as followers of ideals. This in turn requires moral reflexivity in the staging of collective action. The article shows how dramaturgical control (Goffman) is exercised towards this end among activists engaged in two social movements in Sweden: the Plowshares peace movement and Animal Rights Sweden. The article further examines the internal stratification, or ‘moral hierarchies’, within the two activist groups in the light of the proposed model. The closer the activists were able to adhere to the sacred ideal, the higher the social status they enjoyed within the group.     

The Judaic Roots of Neil Postman's Cultural Commentary

Over a period of some 4 decades, Neil Postman's intellectual production took the form of a cultural commentary that addressed topics relating to education, communication, and American culture, informed by a media ecology perspective. This article focuses on the relationship between Postman's religious heritage and his scholarship, noting that he rarely made overt reference to his background, and mostly to support the traditional melting pot ideal of American culture. It is argued that Postman saw himself as being religious without being observant and, in his writing, was often critical of religious close-mindedness and fanaticism without dismissing or derogating the value of religion in general. The Judaic roots of his cultural commentary can be seen in particular in his emphasis on the distinction between verbal and visual communication, and his critique of image culture; in the importance he attached to the word in both its oral and written forms; in his ability to distance himself from contemporary American culture and his call to say no to media and technologies such as television and the computer; in his ongoing concern with education and schooling; and in his concern with social justice and moral responsibility, which informed his approach to media ecology and formed the basis of his argument that we ought to regard social science in general as a form of storytelling and moral theology.     

The politics of collective repair: examining object-relations in a postwork society

In this paper, we look at repair as an emergent focus of recent activism in affluent societies, where a number of groups are reclaiming practices of repair as a form of political and ecological action. Ranging from those that fight for legislative change to those groups who are trying to support ecological and social change through everyday life practices, repair is beginning to surface tensions in everyday life and as such poses opportunities for its transformation. We survey a few of the practices that make up this movement in its various articulations, to take stock of their current political import. While we suggest that these practices can be seen as an emergent lifestyle movement, they should not be seen as presenting a unified statement. Rather, we aim to show that they articulate a spectrum of political positions, particularly in relation to the three specific issues of property, pedagogy and sociality. These three dimensions are all facets of current internal discrepancies of repair practices and moreover express potential bifurcations as this movement evolves. Drawing on a diverse methodology that includes discourse analysis and participant observation, we suggest some of the ways in which this growing area of activity could play a significant role in resisting the commodification of the everyday and inventing postwork alternatives.     

Social work promoting participation: reflections on policy practice in Italy

One of the core dimensions of social work practice, identified since its establishment as a professional endeavour, is concerned with political action. Nonetheless, policy practice, which entails that social workers should connect their work with individuals, as in traditional casework, to wider political action, is often perceived as marginal in everyday practice. This paper connects views on social work policy practices to the context provided by the ways social policies are actually constructed in Italy. A research study on governance processes across Italy, addressing the main actors involved in social policy-making, reveals that in fact practitioners’ political action is differently represented within different frameworks, ranging from being seen as a near impossibility, to being perceived as a crucial factor in the policy-making processes. If context and cultures play such a relevant role, synergistic work at different levels and by all the different actors in the social work community is required if we want social workers to be able to express their potential fully in the political arena.     

Legitimating the First Tattoo: Moral Passage through Informal Interaction

Once considered low class or dangerous symbols, tattoos began to be defined as hip, trendy, and glamorous in the 1990s. Using the increasing popularity of tattoos among nineties youth as an example of moral passage, this article examines some of the interpretive processes at work in the destigmatization of deviance. Whereas researchers have positioned political action or population shifts as the main forces influencing moral passage, this article posits a new route toward social change. It builds on participant observation data with a population of middle‐class tattooees and examines how individuals attempted to legitimate their tattoos during interactions with others. First‐time tattooees in the 1990s are seen as agents caught between multiple symbolic orders—symbolic orders that generated conflicting images of tattoos. Relying on a set of legitimation techniques, middle‐class tattooees worked to overcome the negative meanings associated with tattoos by getting body art that conformed to core mainstream norms and values. By examining the creation and use of these legitimation maneuvers, this article reveals the way in which definitions of deviance are negotiated in everyday contexts. In addition, the process of legitimation identified in this article points to one way in which everyday interactions can contribute to larger cultural shifts.     

Australian Policies on Special Education: Towards a Sociological Account

The discussion analyses Australian national and four State policies from a sociological perspective. It examines these written policies (as distinct from stated and enacted policies, cf. Macdonald, 1981) along a number of dimensions, and theorises the various integrationist positions in these policies, using Demaine's (1981) and Culley & Demaine's (1983) framework. In addition, it comments on other aspects of these policies which have social and sociological significance, including their social control implications.     

Business IN Society: The Social Contract Revisited

Abstract

Perhaps no theoretical perspective better supports evolving expectations of corporate social responsibility than social contract theory. Centuries old, this dominant theory has proven to be highly influential in Western contexts, as it encompasses both institutional and moral consideration. The relationship between business and society has become increasingly significant in recent years as businesses must respond to rapid global change, pressing externalities, and serious societal concerns, many of which cannot be adequately attended to by any party alone. This paper offers an evolutionary perspective of the social contract in light of modern day realities and shifting societal expectations. Implications are derived from both moral and pragmatic arguments to suggest that the implied social contract is meaningfully evolving in new directions both in terms of theory and practice, most particularly regarding business purpose, leadership, and social responsibility.     

Reckoning Schemes of Legitimation: On Commissions of Inquiry as Power/Knowledge Forms

Abstract Drawing upon literature from Australia, Canada, England, India, South Africa, Sweden, and the United States this article offers an alternative framework for the study of Commissions of Inquiry. Conventional understandings of such inquiries as policy-making instruments of Government fail to grasp the significance of their political form. A reading which stresses the symbolic and ritual aspects of their work and analyses the forms of communication which are organized through public inquiries provides a better framework for grasping the place of these institutions in the reproduction of State power. This article argues that public inquiries derive authority from their distinctive legal, social, and epistemological status. The work of such inquiries can be characterized as 'reckoning schemes of legitimation', and this work structures political discourse in three phases: investigative, persuasive, and archival. The abiding significance of Commissions lies not simply in the investigation of facts and the recommendation of policy, but in the elaboration of the 'idea of the state'. Such schemes of legitimation serve in constituting a realm of discourse through which collective action vis-à-vis Society by those who act in the name of the State becomes thinkable, and thereby organizable.     

Action and institution,network and function: The cybernetic concept of social structure

A program of research on the formal representation and analysis of institutional structures is taken a step further by integrating it with recent developments in the formal representation of hierarchical levels of inclusion or part-whole relations. We begin by reviewing a cybernetic conception of action and show how this relates to the construction of production system models of institutional structures. Thereafter, we treat the inclusion hierarchy to show how the production rule constitutes the conceptual unit integrating social knowledge and social action upon which are built two hierarchies, involving institutional entities and social networks, respectively. We indicate some of the detailed forms of control involved in these hierarchies and then show how a form of functional analysis can be undertaken on this basis. Finally, we provide a lengthy discussion of the promise and problems of this mode of structural analysis.     

Which theory of moral evolution should social scientists choose?1

The issue of moral, social and political evolution is a basic chapter of the social sciences and has given birth to a great variety of theories. Beyond their diversity, these theories belong to two basic types. The first disregards, to a large extent, the role of ideas in evolution. Either it ignores their existence or it treats them as dependent variables: as being basically reactions of the social actors to changes in their environment. The second, by contrast, treats ideas as independent variables. It starts from the assumption that the explanation of moral, social and political evolution should take into consideration the capacity of human beings to propose and endorse interpretations of the world and to define programs of action. The first model is basically mechanical; the second is programmatic and rational, in the sense that it sees ideas as rationally selected. This second model has been convincingly illustrated by Durkheim and Weber. The processes they have identified can be discerned in the case of evolutionary phenomena characteristic of our time, such as the extension of rights in democratic societies.     

Support and Control among ‘Friends’ and ‘Special Friends’: Peer Groups' Social Resources as Emotional and Moral Performances amidst Teenagers

Children are often regarded as being supported and controlled by adults, rather than their peer groups. In contrast, drawing on research carried out in Finland, this article considers peers as a resource. Using mainly a 14‐year‐old’s oral narratives, it is shown how the spatial and social context enables and inhibits children’s mutual support and control, reflecting and producing social and moral positions, and inclusion and exclusion. The analysis exploits the performance approach, which stresses children’s active role in the formation of social resources and reconstructs support and control from a child’s point of view.     

Doctoral Study Programs in Social Work at HBCUs: Origin and Program Development

Fisk University began the genesis of HBCU graduate programs in 1880. During the next fifty years, several other HBCUs established graduate programs. That group included Lincoln, Howard, and Morgan State. However, only Lincoln University established a PhD program. The primary goal of this paper is to provide a historical perspective regarding the development of social work doctoral degree programs in the context of HBCU graduate degree program development. Although HBCU social work doctoral programs have only existed since 1978, they are significant and growing academic enterprises which are expanding the pool of doctoral level social work experts and professors of color. Further, these programs should be viewed contextually as producers of scholars on the larger landscape of the academy.     

‘Providing a Link with the Real World’: Learning from the Student Experience of Service User and Carer Involvement in Social Work Education

Social work has long placed an emphasis on involving users and carers in the education of practitioners, an emphasis driven by service users and carers themselves, the value base of social work, and by policy and legislation from successive governments and regulatory bodies. Recent changes in regulation and professional standards in social work suggest a continuing commitment to service user and carer involvement. This paper argues that in order to ensure a sustainable commitment, there needs to be greater evidence of the value and purpose of such involvement. Whilst there is a considerable body of literature on this issue in social work education, little focus is on any impact on current and future practice of social work students. The paper discusses a research project addressing this issue from the perspective of social work students. Findings suggest that the involvement of service users and carers in their training was perceived by students as overwhelmingly positive, should be enhanced and that they believed that these experiences were taken forward in their practice. The paper also identifies key points that could inform best educational practice.