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Book Review: Beyond Left and Right. The Future of Radical Politics

A short and under-researched chapter deals with panics about female violence and girl gangs. Finally, Thompson looks at panics about sex on the screen, mainly examining the National Viewers and Listeners Association. While this book is useful in foregrounding some aspects of the media in moral panics, it is less so in questioning the very terminology of its title. Thompson does refer to a sociology of morals and changing forms of moral regulation, as well as briefly touching on what qualifies as a panic. But these matters are left underexplored. It might have been expected that the moral component of moral panics would have been subject to greater scrutiny by someone who has also written on the sociology of religion. Questions about why and how moral diversity and changing values do and do not figure in the media could have been addressed. In a concern to assert that moral panic is a key sociological concept, there is very little about what makes something a panic. This word has led to a view of the term moral panic as wholly pejorative. Some have also critiqued the ways in which ‘reason’ and ‘emotion’ are contrasted in analyses of moral panics, where the former is often used to disqualify the latter. Attempts to develop a ‘grassroots’ or bottom-up conception of moral crusades sometimes avoid this problem. But there is still a question of where the panic occurs and who, if anyone, is actually panicking. Most analyses of moral panics focus on and make much use of the media, but the obvious point that a media panic may be far from the same thing as a public panic is still glossed over, as the two are often treated as if they are the same thing. Furthermore, attempts to delineate the core characteristics of moral panics do not seem to stand up to scrutiny. For example, was the social reaction to BSE a moral panic? The ‘threat’ may not have been mundane, but was it regarded as a threat to social order itself ? Has there been increased hostility because of it and, if so, directed at what or whom? Beef producers, the government or the cows? Whether the idea of moral panics can be used sensibly, or perhaps at all, is open to more doubt than this book indicates.