Industry experts gather for Moral Panics: Children & Youth seminar
17 May 2013
— Heather Piper (Manchester Metropolitan University), Professor Ian Butler (University of Bath) and Viv Cree (University of Edinburgh).
We live in a world that is increasingly characterised as full of risk, danger and threat to our children. Every day a new headline forces us to re-evaluate who we can trust. And as the institutions we assumed would protect our children appear to fail, we grow more and more uncertain as to know how to respond.
A panel of leading academics, policy makers, practitioners, journalists and service users came together to examine these anxieties in the seminar Moral Panic, Children & Youth which took place on Friday 17 May at the University of Bath.
Using the concept of moral panic delegates began to interpret some of the major alarms and concerns affecting children and young people that have gripped the public in the past few years.
Topics covered included sexual misconduct in schools, child pornography, child trafficking and child protection agencies.
Professor Ian Butler from our Department of Social & Policy Sciences - the first of two keynote speakers – began proceedings with a presentation on the scandals surrounding child protection.
Professor Butler said: “Moral panic is increasingly playing a part in the public’s opinion of social issues affecting children today. The danger with moral panic is that there is a rush for a simple solution to a complex problem. This seminar examined the social issues, and anxieties they create, in all their complexity.”
Photos from the seminar
Further information
Moral Panic, Children & Youth is part of a series of seminars examining moral panic.
The series – Revisiting Moral Panics: A critical examination of 21st century social issues and anxieties – is organised jointly by the University of Bath and the University of Edinburgh and is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).
The series was successfully launched at the University of Edinburgh in November 2012.
View the presentations
-
The
missing child in child pornography
Dr Ethel Quayle -
Communicating concern: analysing 2012 press releases of UK child welfare and
protection agencies (27:45)
Dr Gary Clapton and Professor Viviene Cree -
The
construction of a myth of historical child abuse (55:15)
Mark Smith -
Revisiting
moral panics: A critical examination of 21st century social issues & anxieties
Professor Viviene Cree -
Moral
panic and child protection (15:00)
Professor Ian Butler -
Researching
child abuse: beyond a panic and beyond morality?
Heather Piper (62:00) -
Unearthing
melodrama: Moral panic theory and the enduring characterisation of child trafficking
Dr Joanne Westwood -
Moralising
discourse and the dialectical formation of class identities: the social reaction to 'chavs' in
Britain (34:35)
Dr Elias le Grand -
The
case of the "Good Time Girl": revisiting the post-war moral panic through the lens of gender
Louise Jackson -
Moral panic that never was? child protection in the most religious European
country (29:20)
Magdalena Rek-Wozniak and Wojciech Woziak -
Class politics and social work in the moral regulation of parenting (1:00:38)
Dr Jo Warner
