Reapproaching Moral Panic
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View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by ResearchArchive at Victoria University of Wellington ANGEL FACES, KILLER KIDS, AND APPETITES FOR EXCESS: REAPPROACHING MORAL PANIC By Sarah Louise Wright A thesis submitted to Victoria University of Wellington in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Criminology Victoria University of Wellington 2010 For Jake. E kore e ae i te kupu taku aroha mōu. i ii Abstract It is argued that the contemporary era is one proliferated with moral panics (Thompson, 1998). This is just as the concept of moral panic, which has enjoyed nearly forty years of analytical purchase, is being ‘rethought’ with an impetus to connect its processes with developments in social theory. Underpinning this rethink is a primary question: what are moral panics extreme examples of? It is evident in the literature, however, that there is a varying degree to which a more longstanding question – why moral panics occur – is addressed as part of this rethink. I propose in this thesis that these questions are intimate with each other; that only by understanding why real episodes occur can a supposition of what the concept of moral panic is in an abstract sense begin. Another – related – proposal is that while the conjectural question remains elusive the approach to empirical cases of moral panic be in real-type/ideal-type terms. That is, that at the same time as the concept is employed to understand phenomena occurring in tangible social situations, a reflection upon the concept (the ideal-type) is undertaken in relation to how the real-type case under investigation challenges and/or supports its interpretative parameters. To demonstrate these relationships and their study, I examine in this thesis the case of ‘killer kids’, which emerged in 2002 and spanned across the socio- political landscape of Aotearoa/New Zealand for the next six years. At the heart of this case was a set of news images of a child, who at twelve years of age had been involved in a heinous crime resulting in the death of pizza delivery person Michael Choy. Seeking to understand how and why these images were fundamental to how this ‘real-type’ episode of moral panic unfolded in this space and time, I employ a two-component approach inspired by Norman Fairclough’s (1995a) Critical Discourse Analysis. The first component deconstructs the real- type case via a three-tiered analytical framework: content, process, and context. The second component reflects upon these tiers (in parts and as a whole) in relation to Stanley Cohen’s (1972) application of a ‘cycle of deviance iii amplification’ in addition to the stages of panic as described in his seminal work Folk Devils and Moral Panics. From the processual and contextual factors identified at play in the construction of ‘killer kids’ I conclude with a suggestion that moral panic can be thought of as a set of appetites that come together in an explosive discharge of excess energy. iv Acknowledgments Without hesitation I thank first my family; my mum Diana for her bottomless well of faith; my dad Peter for his support and grounding; my brother Mike for his abhorrence for anything remotely conspiratorial (he believed in my story); my sister Nikki for her spirit; but most of all my son Jake for being my inspiration for everything. David, Jesse, Jane, and Fiona all egged me on from afar when needed. A special thank you to my man Todd for his bottles of wine and grammar corrections (which often came together), and his love. Second, my thanks go to the School of Social and Cultural Studies at Victoria University who have nurtured me through my undergraduate and postgraduate expedition. There are some people I need to mention individually. Mike Hill has long been my mentor and friend. Mike Rowe has almost single-handedly guided me through this thesis, finally corrupting me to the ‘dark side’ – Criminology. I know that if nothing else, he’ll take away from this the story of the student who drew pictures at every meeting and would forget where she had left her car. Fiona Hutton juggled supervision alongside all her other academic commitments and two babies – a true superwoman! Lizzy Stanley held the fort through the final stages and all those niggly extras. Then there is Chamsy el-Ojeili with whom I drank numerous coffees, David Pearson and Allison Kirkman who always stopped to ask how it was going, and Monica Litchi who was a rock with her fabulous computer fixing skills and administrative know-how. Two fellow students who have become dear friends deserve special mention. Amanda Rohloff shares with me the journey of discovering the ins and outs of moral panic. I couldn’t have done without her emails from across the globe in which we read and edited, and argued and agreed. Bronwyn McGovern and I met in our first year of sociology. Since then we’ve laughed, cried, broken-up, made- up, picked up each other’s children, made each other dinner, borrowed each other’s clothes and embarked on PhD’s. v My thanks also go to those people who didn’t know me personally, but whose time here and there went a long way to achieving my work; Jim Tully at Canterbury University, Saffron Solley at TVNZ, Graham Bell of the Police, Lynne Mackie at the Department of Statistics, Guy Reynolds at the Department of Corrections, Ross Setford of NZPA, Brian McKeon of Victoria University, photographer David White, the staffs of the Victoria University library and the National Library of New Zealand, and seven professional journalists who shall remain anonymous. Last but by no means least I acknowledge and am grateful for the support of a VUW PhD scholarship. vi Table of Contents Abstract .................................................................................................................... iii Acknowledgments ......................................................................................................v List of Figures ........................................................................................................... ix Introduction ................................................................................................................1 A Case of Moral Panic .............................................................................................4 Chapter Outline.......................................................................................................14 Chapter One: Moral Panic .....................................................................................17 Folk Devils and Moral Panics.................................................................................18 Policing the Crisis ..................................................................................................20 The Social Construction of Deviance .....................................................................22 A Normative Concept? ..........................................................................................25 Folk Devils ‘Fight Back’ .......................................................................................28 An Absent Public ...................................................................................................31 Outside the Machine ..............................................................................................34 Formulating an Approach to Moral Panic .............................................................38 Chapter Two: Rethinking Moral Panic..................................................................41 Abandon Panic: The Social Scare ..........................................................................43 Preserve Panic: Three Dimensions ........................................................................46 Risk and Morality: The Converging Sites of Anxiety ...........................................48 Volatile Episodes: Moral Panic and Moral Regulation .........................................50 Decivilising Episodes: An Eliasian Approach .......................................................53 The Criminology of the Other, the Heterogeniac, and Energy in Excess ..............57 Approaching the Case of ‘Killer Kids’ ..................................................................63 Chapter Three: Methodology ..................................................................................65 The Epistemology of Moral Panic..........................................................................65 Foucault and Discourse...........................................................................................67 Critical Discourse Analysis ....................................................................................70 Operationalizing CDA for Moral Panic..................................................................73 Data.........................................................................................................................76 Content ...................................................................................................................79 Describing Content ............................................................................................80 Process ...................................................................................................................81 Accessing and Interpreting Process ...................................................................83 Context ...................................................................................................................85 Accessing