tan Cohen: Folk Devils and Moral Panics

Third edition (Routledge, 2002).

Book cover of 'Folk Devils and Moral Panics'Stanley Cohen's study of deviant groups - society's 'folk devils' - and the public and media reaction to them, is both a classic and a very current work of sociology. The book's conclusion is no less applicable today than when it was first published, 30 years ago: 'More moral panics will be generated and other, as yet nameless, folk devils will be created...our society as presently structured will continue to generate problems for some if its members... and then condemn whatever solution these groups find.'

In his new introduction to the third edition, Stanley Cohen reviews recent sociological theory and criticism about the concept of 'moral panics' and discusses the moral panics generated around the 'folk devils' of today: ecstasy and designer drugs; the death of James Bulger; the 'name and shame' campaign against suspected paedophiles; and the vilification of 'bogus' asylum seekers.

'Stan Cohen's Folk Devils and Moral Panics was a brilliant and subtle exercise in "grounded theory". It has proved consistently fertile for a great deal of new work in sociological analysis in the 30 years since its first publication and its critical idea of "moral panics" proved to be generative for a wide variety of scholars and research fields. In the new introduction to the third edition, an original piece of reflection on the vicarious pathways of its appropriation, and a wonderful reprise of its uses and abuses, Stan Cohen gently but steadily guides us back to its original illuminating intellectual core.' - Stuart Hall, Emeritus Professor, The Open University.

'[Cohen's] analysis is richly documented and convincingly presented... Altogether this is a book full of insight, which should lead us to a painful reappraisal of our traditional methods and indeed our whole philosophy for coping with deviants and handling rebellious youth.' New Society, of the first edition.

-Sarah Roberts

Mannheim Centre for Criminology

LSE

Stanley Cohen's study of Mods and Rockers in the 1960s was a foundational text both in terms of investigating the workings of subcultural groups and identifying the concept of a 'moral panic' generated by the media, which leads to groups being vilified in the popular imagination, and inhibits rational debate about solutions to the social problems such groups represent. The insights Cohen provides into subculture and mass morality are as relevant today as they were when the book was originally published in 1972, as illustrated by the author's introduction for this new edition, in which he tracks moral panics over the last thirty years, commenting on the demonization of young offenders and asylum seekers and on the News of the World's 'name and shame' campaign against paedophiles. Revisiting the theory of moral panic and exploring the way in which the concept has been used, this new edition features a select bibliography of key texts for further reading. The third edition of Folk Devils and Moral Panics makes available a valuable and widely recommended text.