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Moral Panic Versus the Risk Society: The

Implications of the Changing Sites of Social
Anxiety

Article in British Journal of Sociology July 2001

DOI: 10.1080/00071310120044980 Source: PubMed

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Sheldon Ungar

Moral panic versus the risk society: the

implications of the changing sites of social
anxiety

ABSTRACT

This paper compares moral panic with the potential political catastrophes of a
risk society. The aim of the comparison is threefold: 1. to establish the position
of risk society threats alongside more conventional moral panics; 2. to examine
the conceptual shifts that accompany the new types of threats; and 3. to outline
the changing research agenda. The paper suggests that as new sites of social
anxiety have emerged around environmental, nuclear, chemical and medical
threats, the questions motivating moral panic research have lost much of their
utility. Conceptually, it examines how the roulette dynamics of the risk society
accidents expose hidden institutional violations that redound into hot potatoes
that are passed among and fumbled by various actors. Changing conceptions of
folk devils, claims making activities, and of a safety are also discussed.

KEYWORDS: Moral panic; risk society; social anxiety; social constructionism;

disproportionality; accident

Moral panic has enjoyed a good run in the sociology of deviance, where it
acquired a special af nity with youth-related issues. This paper suggests
that the sociological domain carved out by moral panic is most fruitfully
understood as the study of the sites and conventions of social anxiety and
fear. Researchers select particular crises to investigate, and thereby ignore
others. But societies change, as do the phenomena associated with out-
breaks of public concern or alarm. As new crises accumulate and become
more visible, they are likely to nd their way on to the research agenda.
This paper examines new sites of social anxiety that have emerged along-
side moral panics. These are best captured by Becks (1992) concept of a
risk society. The paper, then, compares the elements and conditions of
moral panic with those of the political potential of catastrophes bred in a risk
society (Beck 1992: 24; italics in original). The aim of the comparison is

British Journal of Sociology Vol. No. 52 Issue No. 2 ( June 2001) pp. 271291
2001 London School of Economics and Political Science ISSN 0007-1315 print/1468-4446 online
Published by Routledge Journals, Taylor & Francis Ltd on behalf of the LSE
DOI: 10.1080/00071310120044980
272 Sheldon Ungar

threefold: 1. to establish the position of risk society threats alongside more

conventional moral panics; 2. to examine the conceptual shifts that accom-
pany the new types of threats; and 3. to outline the changing research
agenda, including the identi cation of gaps characteristic of moral panic
research.

THE IDEA OF MORAL PANIC

Consider Cohens classic de nition

Societies appear to be subject, every now and then, to periods of moral
panic. A condition, episode, person or groups of persons emerges to
become de ned as a threat to societal values and interests; its nature is
presented in a stylized and stereotypical fashion by the mass media; the
moral barricades are manned by editors, bishops politicians and other
right-thinking people; socially accredited experts pronounce their diag-
noses and solutions; ways of coping are evolved (or more often) resorted
to; the condition then disappears, submerges or deteriorates and
becomes more visible. (Cohen 1972: 9)
Unfortunately, this de nition is cited so frequently that readers are apt to
skip it! Careful perusal of the text reveals that it allows for but does not
necessitate most of the presumptions and concepts that have accrued to
the study of moral panic. Consider the concept of folk devil, which is typi-
cally identi ed with the evil doings of an individual or group of individuals.
Cohens de nition, however, encompasses not only person or groups of
persons but also condition and episode. The latter, as in the case of the
elite panic over swine u in the USA, do not readily fall under the folk devil
rubric. Similarly, nothing in this text necessitates the idea of dispropor-
tionality, although the exaggeration of the threat has been a key concern
of moral panic researchers (e.g., Jenkins 1998, 1999) and of social con-
structionists generally (Ungar 1998a).
Since most of the ostensibly critical elements of moral panic are not
stipulated by de nition, they apparently ow from the (more contingent)
procedures and details of Cohens classic study. In this context, it is prob-
ably a sterile exercise to ask what moral panic is really about (cf. Hunt
1997). Instead, the aim here is to open space for the consideration of other
social anxieties that do not quite t the moral panic paradigm. Then these
new anxieties will be used to re ect on the nature and limits of the moral
panic research.

SOCIAL ANXIETY IN THE RISK SOCIETY

Starting from the mid-1980s on in particular, new social anxieties in

advanced industrial societies have built up around nuclear, chemical,
Moral panic versus the risk society 273

environmental, biological and medical issues (Goode and Ben-Yehuda

1994a: 131134; Hanmer 1987; Rothman and Lichter 1988; Ungar 1990,
1991, 1992a, 1992b, 1995, 1998a, 1998b). Pertinent examples of these anx-
ieties include the threat of nuclear winter, Three Mile Island, breast
implants, various forms of reproductive technology and biotechnology, the
ozone hole, the greenhouse summer of 1988, the Exxon Valdez, Ebola
Zaire, and Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE). These new risks
have steadily gained greater prominence and created their own issue-atten-
tion cycles. For example, 1986 brought, just one year after the surprise dis-
covery of the ozone crater, Chernobyl, the Challenger accident, and toxic
pollution of the Rhine River following a chemical re in Basle, Switzerland.
Not surprisingly, ecological concerns rose to the top of the public agenda
by the late 1980s (Dunlap and Scarce 1991).
Beck (1992, 1995) subsumes these new sites of social anxiety under the
concept of a risk society. While risks are an inevitable consequence of
industrialization, Beck claims that the side effects produced by late
modernization are a new development. As compared to the recent past
(and especially prior to the Second World War), these risks have novel
impacts that are: 1) ver y complex in terms of causation; 2) unpredictable
and latent; 3) not limited by time, space, or social class (i.e., globalized); 4)
not detectable by our physical senses; and 5) are the result of human
decisions (cf. Ali 1999). Essentially, the economic gains following from the
application of science and technology are increasingly being overshadowed
by the unintended production and distribution of bads. These have gone
from being unrecognized, to latent, to globalized, as new types of tech-
nology and processes of production, new chemicals, drugs and so on, and
new scales of activity combine to accentuate the risks.
According to Beck (1992: 24; italics in original), In smaller or larger
increments a smog alarm, a toxic spill, etc. what thus emerges in risk
society is the political potential of catastrophes . . . Risk society is a catastrophic
society. The catastrophic potential of the risk society gives rise to a re exive
orientation, whereby new technologies are subject to increasing scienti c
scrutiny and public criticism. But despite the greater public involvement
and accountability implied by re exive modernization (Beck, Giddens
and Lash 1994), side effects remain for the most part unpredictable and
incalculable. They are akin to normal accidents, where what has been sci-
enti cally ruled out (as either impossible or extremely improbable) pre-
dictably occurs (Perrow 1984). With new technologies such as genetic
engineering, the scienti c procedures for monitoring risks and protecting
the public shift from the security of the laboratory to the real world. As
society is rendered into a social laborator y, accidents not only come as a
surprise but also can provide a crash course in institutional failings.
As this paper is being revised, Canadians are being inundated with news
of an E. coli outbreak in Walkerton, Ontario (population = 4,800), that has
killed seven people and left 2300 ill.1 It provides a good example of a risk
society accident discussed by Beck. E. coli O157:H7 is thought to be a new
274 Sheldon Ungar

pathogen linked not only to water but to hamburger disease (it may be
caused by the overuse of antibiotics in animal feed). The rst suspected E.
coli death was on May 15. The public was warned on May 21. The source of
the E. coli contamination in Walkerton remains unknown. As the media,
environmental groups and opposing political parties forage for infor-
mation, a host of incriminating institutional failures have emerged and all
parties are seeking to avoid carrying the hot potato.
Signi cant questions (in simpli ed form) are as follow: 1. Why did it take
so long for town authorities to inform the populace of the risk?; 2. Why
didnt the laboratory hired to test drinking water alert medical of cials?
(the pathogen was detected about ve days prior to the outbreak; appar-
ently there is no legal duty to do so); 3. Did the closing of all Ministry of
the Environment water-testing labs and their privatization in 1996 con-
tribute to the problem?; and 4. Did downsizing of the Ministr y of the
Environment (about a 40 per cent decrease in budget and 30 per cent in
staff) contribute to the outbreak?
With a range of additional questions, four inquiries have been estab-
lished by the police, the coroners of ce, the Ministry of the Environment,
and an independent public hearing (the Provincial Government initially
repudiated the latter, but bowed to public pressures).2 Several class-action
lawsuits have also been launched. There have been numerous reports of
bacterial and pesticide contamination in other towns, several of which have
been ordered to boil their water. Questions are also being raised about
long-term effects, since E. coli O157:H7 can cause permanent kidney
damage, especially in children. Walkertons tourist industr y has been
devastated (with con icting claims over who should bear the costs), and
there is a pervasive sense in commentary from rural areas that one can
never trust the water again.

COEXISTING ANXIETIES?

How will the rise of such risk society issues affect the occurrence and
development of moral panics? A dif culty in addressing this question is a
lack of agreement about what is happening with moral panics. McRobbie
and Thornton (1995) argue that panics are harder to constitute than they
once were. Citing the failed effort to construct a moral panic around single
mothers in Britain, they suggest that the proliferation of mass media and
the attendant capacity of folk devils to ght back (they are less marginal-
ized than they once were) have sharply curtailed the potential for moral
panics. In contrast, Thompson (1998: 2) refers to the increasing rapidity
in the succession of moral panics and the all-pervasive quality of panics
that distinguish the current era. These contradictor y claims can be seen in
practice in North America. While successful US moral panics have been
directed against single mothers and illegal immigrants, efforts to construct
Moral panic versus the risk society 275

panics around these issues engendered strong resistance in Canada (cf.

Eastland 1995).
Fear of crime remains high and seems to be immune to data indicating
that crime rates have been falling throughout the 1990s. If fear of crime in
particular suggests that panics are not about to be displaced by risk society
threats, it may be better to speak of a complementar y relationship between
the two types of anxieties. Thus Hollway and Jefferson (1997: 258) suggest
that fear of crime and risk of victimization must be considered in light of
Becks argument that risk is pervasive in late modernity. They argue that
. . . fear of crime is a particularly apt discourse within the modernist
quest for order since the risks it signi es, unlike other late modern risks,
are knowable, decisionable, (actionable), and potentially controllable. In an
age of uncertainty, discourses that appear to promise a resolution to
ambivalence by producing identi able victims and blameable villains are
likely to gure prominently in the States ceaseless attempts to impose
social order (1997: 265; italics in original).
In other words, fear of crime may be a relatively reassuring site for displac-
ing the more uncertain and uncontrollable anxieties of a risk society.
Jenkins (1999: 89) study of designer drugs locates a substantive realm
where there are elements of convergence between the two types of social
anxiety. What he calls synthetic panics are linked to new technologies and
human ingenuity, scientists cast as Dr. Frankenstein, a loss of control, and
the creation of forbidden knowledge all common elements of risk
society issues. The latter has also brought a re exive orientation whereby
victims challenge authorities and ght back. Since McRobbie and Thorn-
ton (1995) observe a similar resistance by folk devils in moral panic, it
appears that relationships between authorities and their publics are becom-
ing more open and less manipulative regardless of the type of social anxiety
involved.

COMPARING THE OLD AND THE NEW

To compare the two types of social anxiety, this paper draws on analyses of
moral panic because it is a more seasoned concept whose antecedence has
allowed time for the systematic formulation of criteria. The most systematic
(if at times plodding) historical and theoretical account of moral panic is
provided by Goode and Ben-Yehuda (1994a, 1994b). They list ve crucial
elements or criteria of moral panic: 1. Concern; 2. Hostility; 3. Consensus
4. Disproportionality; and 5. Volatility. The ensuing comparison is guided
by their ve crucial elements, though the organization of the discussion
departs from theirs.
The present analysis focuses on the conceptual shifts that accompany
emerging risk society threats and the changing research agenda implied by
them. Conceptually, moral panic is linked to a social constructionist
276 Sheldon Ungar

perspective. The main issues addressed in this research concern the exag-
geration of the actual threat and the use of panics to engineer social con-
sensus and control. With risk society accidents being highly unpredictable
and uncontrollable, the social constructionist concern with exaggeration is
largely undermined as an analytic strategy. The roulette dynamics of risk
society accidents are also at variance with the model of social control and
folk devils used in moral panic research. Instead of authorities and other
institutional actors using social anxieties to impose moral order, they can
nd themselves as carriers of hot potatoes. Methodologically, the risk
society points to an array of new questions and throws into relief some
faulty research assumptions and procedures found in moral panic studies.

THE ISSUES OF CONCERN/CONSENSUS

That heightened concern is a prerequisite for panic is true by de nition.

Beyond this truism lies a morass of problems. These are rendered manifest
through an examination of changes in the types of social issues that form
the sites of social anxiety (cf. McRobbie 1994: 216). Moral panic has always
been conceptualized narrowly (as seen in the ve criteria listed above), and
thereby encompasses only a small number of the subset of social problems
that fall in the domain of deviance and even more speci cally, youth
deviance. Hence panics could be designated as time-to-time events, some-
thing, like witch hunts, that are more exceptional than ordinary.3 In con-
trast, claims about the potentially fearful events associated with a risk
society are far more ubiquitous. Indeed, with some exaggeration, Beck
(1992: 367) claims that, Where everything turns into a hazard, somehow
nothing is dangerous anymore. The risk society is characterized, in other
terms, by a stream of emergencies and would-be emergencies.
Just as Simmel demonstrated that a shift in group size from two to three
or more members had qualitative implications, so too do the dissimilar sites
and pools of issues affect all elements of the analysis of social anxiety.
Moral panic is constituted by a relatively small pool of mostly familiar
threats, or variations on a theme. The risk society is constituted by a vast
number of relatively unfamiliar threats, with new threats always lurking in
the background. When occasional problems are supplanted by a burgeon-
ing pool of contending catastrophes, all aspects of claim-making are ren-
dered more open, variable, and problematic. In this section I discuss two
conceptual issues models of panic creation and the status of failed panics
and one methodological issue questions about the depth and exten-
siveness of public concern.

Models of Panic Creation

Research on moral panic generally takes a top-down approach to claims-
making. According to McRobbie (1994: 199), moral panic boils down to
Moral panic versus the risk society 277

instilling fear in people and, in so doing, encouraging them to turn away

from complexity and the visible social problems of ever yday life and either
to retreat into a fortress mentality a feeling of helplessness, political
powerlessness and paralysis or to adopt a gung-ho something must be
done about it attitude. Theoretical sociological interest in the concept,
then, devolves around notions of social regulation, manipulation by the
powerful, and deviance ampli cation.
Risk society issues do not generally t a top-down model. If responses to
nuclear reactors are prototypical, panics appear to require some catalytic
real-world event that is given direction by interest groups and carried
forward by elements of the informed public, often as part of social move-
ment organizations (Ungar 1990, 1992b). Signi cantly this will be elabor-
ated below political authorities and large actors often nd themselves the
target of such activities and have encountered strong resistance in their
efforts to in uence long-term public opinion (e.g., Rothman and Lichter
1987).
From a social constructionist perspective, claims making pertaining to
moral panics can derive more from a shift in moral boundaries than either
the objective standing of a condition or new evidence (Hannigan 1995:
38). Moreover, claims may be about valence issues (these are one-sided
issues, as in hard drug use) or involve relatively disproportionate power on
the contending sides, as folk devils are pitted against better-organized and
more powerful groups. With the risk society, issues tend to be warranted
more by scienti c ndings or claims, with scientists, for all their public lia-
bilities, playing a central role in the cast of claims makers. Given scienti c
uncertainties, the likelihood that the medias attempt to strike an equilib-
rium will be greater for factual than for moral claims (Gans 1995: 40), and
the chance that the powerful will nd themselves targeted, a more equal
balance of power between rival claims makers is anticipated with risk issues.
In short, moral panic has conventionally focused on social control pro-
cesses aimed at the moral failing of dispossessed groups. Risk society issues
tend to involve diverse interest groups contending over relatively
intractable scienti c claims. However, the former have come closer to the
latter as diverse media and attention to a broader range of voices allow folk
devils to contest the setting of moral boundaries. Social regulation pro-
cesses, in other words, have become less predictable and more fractious.

Failed Panics
At the extreme, one could contend that knowledge about moral panics is
fundamentally tainted. Virtually all of the research involves retrospective
studies of panics which were deemed authentic. But in the absence of
comparable examples of unsuccessful efforts, conclusions about key vari-
ables and processes amount to asserting that what transpired (more or
less) had to. Thus it is usual to attribute panics to broader social, economic
or political strains, but no effort is made to determine whether these
278 Sheldon Ungar

subterranean dissatisfactions have existed for extended periods of time

without provoking panics. In this regard, research comparing successful
and unsuccessful panics over nuclear weapons suggests that the role of
claims makers may be overstated while the import of real-world events and
an agitated public understated (Ungar 1990, 1992b).
Claims making to no effect is much more transparent for risk society
issues. In this case, the pool of potential catastrophes closely mirrors
Hilgartner and Bosks (1988) ecology of competition for scarce attention
in different public arenas. Given scienti c uncertainty, frequent invisibility,
and the rival claims making about issues that are often unfamiliar and
complex, it is very dif cult to bring attention to many issues. A key process
here involves crossovers, where issues jump from one arena to another and
potentially create a whirlwind of attention (Ungar 2000). Efforts to follow
the passage of issues across arenas more often than not lead to a dead end.
Here I consider one example, which throws into relief differences created
by risk society issues.
A number of scienti c books and conferences, as well as numerous
papers, have raised the alarm over the worldwide tendency for frogs to be
deformed or to disappear (Phillips 1994; Sounder 1999). For scientists,
frogs, with their thin membranes that allow them to live on both land and
water, are regarded as a potential early warning signal for some as yet
unspeci ed environmental changes. Far less than half of these scienti c
reports make the passage into popular science arenas both magazines
and Internet sites that give specialized attention to scienti c issues.4 The
next step in the chain is usually the New York Times, which can serve as a
critical diffusion point to other mass media outlets (Mazur and Lee 1993).
Computer searches, however, reveal only a handful of articles on frogs in
this American paper of record. Beyond that, the issue all but disappears, as
popular magazines, several other newspapers, and the three major US tele-
vision networks largely ignore the problem. Frogs, as several scientists have
observed, are not easy to sell.
Until recently, methodological problems made it extremely dif cult to
follow the passage of issues across different arenas. Thus claim making at
community levels or at the base of social movement organizations remains
relatively invisible to most social research, especially when data are col-
lected from the national mass media or conventional polling samples used
by Gallup and the like. But since risk issues are usually articulated rst (or
very early on) by scientists, both jumps and blockages at crossover points
can be systematically studied with the use of computer indexes and the
Internet.

Tapping Into Public Concerns

One key crossover involves the spread of fear among broad elements of the
general public. De nitions of moral panic all stipulate that overheated
periods of intense concern or explosions of fear must be relatively
Moral panic versus the risk society 279

widespread among the public. A surge of public concern implies that an

issue is in the air (Mazur 1981). This metaphor suggests that the atten-
tive public is not only aware of the issue but is suf ciently alarmed that
they discuss it. However, personal worries and agitated conversations leave
few traces. Even community meetings tend to be invisible a step beyond
their immediate venue. An issue may be percolating among members of
the public, but the concerns are still more likely to zzle than to foam
upwards.
The classic specimen of moral panic witch hunts largely obviates the
problem of measuring outbreaks of public concern. The use of the pillor y
during witch crazes atrocity tales, burning, drowning and so on affords
prima facie evidence of public involvement (e.g., Briggs 1996). Overall,
behavioural indicators anti-nuclear demonstrations, community protests
against the release of convicted child abusers, or the drop in British beef
sales during the BSE scare are preferred. Unfortunately, direct behav-
ioural evidence is often lacking or dif cult to come by.
Here again there appears to be an important difference between the two
types of social anxieties. While research on moral panics infrequently draws
on poll results (Beckett 1994; Thompson 1998: 1212), some risk society
threats like Ebola and nuclear reactors have generated more speci c data
on public reactions (e.g., Moeller 1999: 8095; Rothman and Lichter
1987).5 In this context, both Ebola and nuclear reactors evoked hot crises
that threatened to explode around us (Ungar 1998b). Still, there is not suf-
cient evidence to know whether people are consumed with anxiety about
risks in their environment (cf. Furedi 1997) or have adopted Jane Austins
attitude to the Battle of Waterloo: How dreadful that so many poor fellows
have been killed, and what a blessing that one cares for none of them.
With moral panic in particular, researchers have nessed the problem by
employing indirect and questionable indicators of public concern. Most
common is the use of coverage in the mass media as a surrogate for public
concern. 6 Yet a large number of studies of agenda-setting report weak
effects that are consistent with Gamson and Modiglianis (1989) con-
clusion that media attention and public opinion constitute parallel but dis-
tinct systems of meaning. Another ostensible measure of public concern is
legislative activity on an issue (Goode 1989). However, research on agenda
setting indicates that the relationship between political activity and public
concerns is weak and contingent (Kingdon 1995). That is, both policy pro-
posals and policy changes are largely determined by institutional contin-
gencies and activities speci c to the policy domain.
Both media coverage and legislative activity involve actors several steps
removed from the general public. While public opinion polling would
appear to furnish more direct and cogent measures of public concerns,
polls typically occur too infrequently to catch the dramatic soar and slump
cycles of issues that make it in the air (Ungar 1994). Moreover, the ques-
tions used in polls tend to be too limited to tap into intense outbreaks of
concern that verge on or encompass fear.7 Indeed, since the radar image
280 Sheldon Ungar

of public opinion is of such low resolution, politicians and other claims

makers have become adept at manipulating these results for their own pur-
poses. 8
Catching waves of public concern remains a dif cult task. However,
researchers can get closer to the action. Over the last decade, at least two
alternative media have emerged through which public concerns can be
accumulated and ampli ed. The rst is talk radio. In an interesting study,
Page and Tannenbaum (1996) rst show that the mainstream media and
public of cials reacted with complacency when it was discovered that Zoe
Bard, President Clintons nominee for attorney general of the USA, had
knowingly hired illegal aliens. In contrast to this downplaying of the stor y,
radio talk show hosts across the country were inundated with public
outrage. This, coupled with calls to senators of ces, resulted in media
defections and elite retreat. According to the authors
Our main point is that a relatively autonomous popular uprising based
on the bare facts of the case as reported on TV, and reinforced by
hearing fellow citizens anger on talk radio overcame the complacency
of Washington of cials and media elites, changed public discourse, and
overturned Bards sure-thing con rmation. (Page and Tannenbaum
1996: 4344)
Effectively, talk radio is a blunt instrument capable, under some con-
ditions, of allowing the voices of ordinar y citizens to be ampli ed and
heard.
The second alternative medium for voice ampli cation is the Internet.
Whereas talk radio is mediated by the moderator (and perhaps sponsors,
etc.), Internet home pages, bulletin boards and chat groups are only
limited by that proportion of the public with computer access. This
medium is otherwise ideal for catching waves of concern as it operates in
real time. Following the May 1995 outbreak of Ebola Zaire, a Lycos search
of the World Wide Web revealed at least 150 sites with related information
(Ungar 1998b). Ongoing, real-time searches of the Internet during the
mad cow scare commencing in March 1996 resulted in the location of 100s
of news articles, home pages and chat groups. These varied from lengthy
and complicated scienti c debates to meat-substitute recipes to vitriolic
rhetoric directed, over time, at different targets (see below). By late May to
early June 1996, there was a precipitous drop in interest in the topic in all
sources excepting scienti c ones.
Finally, it may be possible to use extant ndings about media practices to
locate a signature of public concern. According to Sandman (1994: 254;
italics in original), Alarming content about risk is more common than reassuring
content or intermediate content except, perhaps, in crisis situations, when the
impulse to prevent panic seems to moderate coverage. Since this moderation
effect has been found for AIDS, nuclear accidents, and Ebola (Ungar
1998b), evidence of media moderation appears to afford a better indicator
of outbreaks of public concern that simple counts of media coverage.
Moral panic versus the risk society 281

Tracking public concerns by means of the methods listed above willy-

nilly is more dif cult than counting media coverage or relying on poll
results. Rather than drawing inferences from a single source or indicator,
investigators are asked to look for clusters of cohering evidence. A further
dif culty is that the use of talk radio and the Internet is facilitated by real-
time rather than retrospective research, since the data may simply dis-
appear. But then researchers interested in what are often short-lived
outbursts of concern ought to adopt a rehouse approach.

THE ISSUES OF HOSTILITY/VOLATILITY

According to Goode and Ben-Yehuda (1994a: 33; italics in original), not

only must the condition, phenomenon, or behaviour be seen as threaten-
ing, but a clearly identi able group or segment of society must be seen as
responsible for the threat. If this criterion is not mandated by Cohens
de nition, neither do these authors uphold it invariantly. Thus they allow
that
Some threatening or supposedly threatening conditions which qualify
according to the criterion of disproportionality lack the folk devil
element for instance, the swine ue scare that took place in the United
States in the 1970s. (op. cit.: 40)9
By the same criterion, they also admit concern over nuclear energy. More
problematic than this de nitional slippage, however, is the circumscribed
conceptual approach to the creation of folk devils.
For the most part, folk devils have been identi ed as youth or other dis-
possessed groups who are the target of moral outrage due to their evil
activities that threaten core values of society. But instead of regarding folk
devils as givens, a risk society perspective suggests that their creation is best
seen as a foraging process, an essayed induction that must take hold. As
unforeseen side effects, manufactured hazards seem to generate a greater
diffusion of blame, with multi-faceted targets that can include govern-
ments, corporations, and other institutions. As Beck (1992: 33) asks, Who
will take the hot potato: the authorities, science or politics? But they do not
till the soil, after all. So it is the farmers? But they were squeezed by the
EEC. . . From a moral panic perspective, both the recently noted tendency
for folk devils to ght back and the idea of failed panics are consistent with
a foraging model.
Observations from several risk society accidents indicate that the hostil-
ity is indeed multi-faceted and volatile. With the Exxon Valdez, enmity was
rst directed against Captain Hazelwood. It then moved to the oil
company, as claims about its cleanup efforts were discredited. Finally,
government institutions were subject to the public pillor y, as evidence
emerged that promised safeguards were never established. Similar volatil-
ity can be seen in the BSE scare. A sample of more than 200 articles
282 Sheldon Ungar

downloaded from the Internet revealed oating blame over a three week
period. Initially, hostility was directed against British farmers. Then the
British government carried the hot potato as claims of a cover-up emerged.
Finally, the European Economic Union became the primary target when it
instituted a ban on British beef exports.
Conceptually, the shift in social control processes and in the nature and
targets of social reactions are probably the most signi cant sociological
developments associated with the risk society. With moral panic, authori-
ties either play a central role in initiating panics or are likely to join
ongoing proceedings and derive some bene t from legitimating and
perhaps directing them. In the roulette dynamics characteristic of manu-
factured accidents accidents is used as a shorthand to cover actual
mishaps, as well as claimed mishaps or claims about potential mishaps
authorities typically forfeit their commanding role and may become the
target of moral outrage. Rather than amplifying the threat, they usually try
to dampen it.
In what follows, I argue that roulette dynamics are deeply embedded in
the relevant institutions and technologies of modernism and hence cannot
be eradicated by more prudent actions or improvements in risk communi-
cation. Indeed, faulty communication can be regarded as a congenital
consequence of institutional arrangements, rather than a free- oating
problem that can be solved on its own (cf. Powell and Leiss 1997).
Uncertainty and unpredictability are at the core of the risk society. New
technologies, especially what Beck (1995: 20) terms mega-technologies,
involve complex systems or interactions that cannot be adequately tested in
laboratories or by computer simulations. Rather, their unanticipated con-
sequences can only be discovered after they are implemented. Effectively,
they must be tested in a societal laboratory (Tenner 1996). This shift from
pre-market to post-market evaluation means that the scienti c discovery
of side effects often corresponds with the social birth of a new and unset-
tling threat.10 A safety model is being replaced by a post-market coping
model.
Such after-the-fact discoveries serve to undermine the role of what Beck
terms public guardians. Indeed, the latter often nd themselves playing a
game of roulette with collective safety. To overcome resistance to new tech-
nologies resistance can be strong enough to block implement, as illus-
trated by genetic manipulation of food in the European Union guardians
of public safety must engage in discourses of reassurance, varying from the
presentation of esoteric scienti c gures to eating a hamburger at a press
conference. Since evidence indicates that the public wants an absolute
yes/no answer to questions about risk (Ali 1999; Powell and Leiss 1997: 20),
guardians work with contradictor y dynamics that require them to provide
no-risk assurances that are unfounded and cannot, realistically, be
founded.
To make matters worse, the demands put on public guardians include
not only resistance to some new technologies, but concerted demands for
Moral panic versus the risk society 283

rapid access to others. Access-on-demand has been especially promoted by

AIDS activists, and drug cocktails are now widely used before they receive
the conventional stamp of scienti c safety (Epstein 1996). Similarly, the
immensely popular diet pills, Redux and Fen uramine, were demanded at
any cost by a weight-conscious public (Lemonick 1997: 58). Now that post-
market testing indicates that they may cause degeneration of heart valves, a
legal stampede for compensation is underway. Consistent with the foraging
for folk devils in a risk society, ngers have been pointed at the US Food
and Drug Administration, the drug companies, doctors and clinics that dis-
pensed them, and the media for hyping them as magic bullets.
Accidents, then, predictably occur, though the site of the mishap is typi-
cally unknown until after events happen. That is, most new technologies
come with (highly uncertain) scienti c warnings, and only after-the-fact is
the real risk obvious.11 For the most part, public authorities encounter the
accident as a whoops experience. Past reassurances are rendered inoper-
ative, and a sense of perplexity becomes manifest as inexperience in risk
communication (accidents are still relatively rare) is coupled with events
that often unfold in unpredictable ways. In Becks (1995: 47) terms, Help-
lessness is the real revelation of our times. While it is now fairly obvious
that experts dont know either when dealing with nuclear reactor or
other mega-technology accidents, even small scale accidents can engender
helplessness and a sense of immobility.
One of Canadas worst toxic accidents, the 1997 plastics re in Hamilton,
Ontario, revealed cascading uncertainties: it was not clear what level of
government ought to assume primar y responsibility for managing events;
there was no inventory of the chemicals on site; far more chemicals were
being stored than legally allowed; of cial advice uctuated sharply in the
rst few days, and the evacuation of nearby residents was delayed; and,
nally, no one had any idea of what the interacting affects of the burning
chemicals might be (Ali 1998). Assurances notwithstanding, many re-
ghters were soon sick and some hospitalized.
In the aftermath of the immediate crisis provoked by an accident,
rainbow coalitions of victims, oppositional scientists, sympathetic journal-
ists, labour unions and other organizations often create moral outrage by
pr ying open hidden institutional behaviours and violations (Lidskog
1996). Rule violations, of course, are normal, inevitable and predictable
features of institutions (Perrow 1984). But when documents, hearings and
so on reveal that authorities ignored prior warnings (however uncertain)
about a risk situation, they give rise to public surprise or shock, as well as
discredit. Thus a sense of betrayal emerged in almost every industrial
nation after tainted-blood victims came to learn that the agencies charged
with keeping the supply safe invariably opted to clear the pipeline and use
up stocks of blood that were suspect.
The exposure and accumulation of oversights, ineptitudes, and viola-
tions tends to engender a marauding sense of disbelief and anger. But this
is generally different to moral panics, where evil folk devils are usually a
284 Sheldon Ungar

distinguishable social type (such as the Mod or the Rocker) whose visi-
bility is the basis of his or her expurgation (Hay 1995: 198).12 With risk
society accidents, the violators are more institutionally-based and somewhat
invisible. It is often their routine rather than deviant actions that underlie
the problem, and the hot potato tends to be passed among different
groups, rather than befall a single disposed one (e.g., Vaughan 1996). The
targets of public anger are as likely to be seen as perplexed, vacillating and
inept as evil or malign, especially as beleaguered experts search for
immediate answers to complex questions in what amounts to a media sh
tank. That is, accidents give rise to a need for science-on-demand, some-
thing that the deliberate process of science can rarely supply (Doern 1999).
Rather than serving as a force of social control or cohesion, risk society
accidents tend to create corrosive communities as the different actors try
to deny their culpability and pass the hot potato (Freudenburg 1997). In
this foraging process, public trust is the ultimate victim.
The impacts of manufactured accidents also tend to be more severe and
chronic than those associated with moral panics. According to Altheide
(1997), the problem fame that has emerged in the media to deal with
moral panic-related issues implies that there is An Answer to the problem.
The system may be overburdened, but at least something can be done
about the situation. Such formulistic solutions, rendered familiar by past
variations on the theme, rarely apply to risk society accidents. That is, con-
tamination by modern hazards tends to be more insidious and unbounded.
There is an irreducible ambiguity to the harm, as toxic effects can be dif -
cult to identify, take years to manifest themselves, or not appear until the
next generation. The ambiguity not only means that it is extremely dif cult
to sound the all clear, but that toxic tort cases stretch conventional rules
of evidence and liability (Grambling and Krogman 1997). The upshot is to
create corrosive communities, as demands for admissions of blame and
compensation are thrown into the political arena with, all too often, ex-
plosive effects.

THE ISSUE OF DISPROPORTIONALITY

Disproportionality has undoubtedly been the central problematic of the

moral panic literature. For one, it encapsulates the political agenda moti-
vating this research domain: speci cally, the power of moral entrepreneurs
to exercise social control by amplifying deviance and orchestrating social
reactions so that the panic becomes a consensus-generating envoy for the
dominant ideology. Disproportionality is also at the core of the social con-
structionist approach. According to this perspective, social reactions have
little relationship to the ostensible threat or condition (it may be improv-
ing even as the panic gets underway), but are largely determined by claims
making activities (Ungar 1998a). Finally, exaggerating the threat has also
became a re exive tool, as the media have come to habitually ask whether
Moral panic versus the risk society 285

politicians are seeking to incite panic or question their own culpability in

generating outbreaks of panic (Hay 1995; McRobbie and Thornton 1995).
Disproportionality also commands the bulk of empirical activity, as
researchers make Herculean efforts to nd the elusive grail of objective
reality. Whereas public concern is too often inferred from media cover-
age, Goode and Ben-Yehuda (1994a: 367) want to be very careful and
acknowledge that determining and assessing the objective dimension is
often a tricky proposition. Hence they go to great lengths to salvage dis-
proportionality and thus save the eld from those who suggest that the
concept is too value-laden and polemical to be scienti cally useful (e.g.,
Waddington 1986).
But the worst fallout comes not from comparing the scale of the threat
with the scale of the response in the realm of deviance, but with the shift
to risk society issues

While we agree with Ungar that, with some conditions, it is impossible to

determine the nature of the objective threat and therefore, for that
condition, to measure the dimension of disproportionality this is most
decidedly not true for many, possibly most, conditions. Threats that are
future-oriented and potentially catastrophic, such as the greenhouse
effect, the earths shrinking ozone layer, and the risk of nuclear warfare,
in all likelihood, are impossible to calculate. (Goode and Ben-Yehuda
1994a: 43; italics in original)

They might well have added that the extreme degree of scienti c uncer-
tainty surrounding these types of issues can take years, if not decades, to
reduce (e.g., Schneider 1994).
Not surprisingly, perhaps, their efforts to shore up disproportionality
lead them into an objectivist position. When they assert that incalculability
is not true for possibly most problems, they are implying the existence of
a set of known and agreed on threats. But what is at issue is not the quan-
tity of real threats, but those speci c conditions that successfully emerge
as sites of social anxiety. In the 1990s, strange weather, emerging viruses,
antibiotic resistance, the possible drop in sperm counts due to gender
bending hormone disrupters, as well as BSE and outbreaks of E. coli have
all been in the forefront of media and (possibly) public concern. So too
has terrorism (TWA Flight 800), and the intense anxiety over job security
prompted by corporate downsizing ostensibly linked to the competitive
demands of globalization. Of these, only TWA Flight 800 comes remotely
close to the criteria that Goode and Ben-Yehuda postulate as necessary to
demonstrate disproportionality.
If the intractable scienti c uncertainties of risk society issues mostly
obviate the central moral panic/social constructionist concern with exag-
gerated threats, the volatility of the former puts a further dent into the idea
of disproportionality. Since a hot potato can be handed off several times
before it securely befalls a speci c target, there is the question of whether
286 Sheldon Ungar

the hostility directed against particular groups or institutions is in fact

warranted. Consider the overlapping complexities raised by the Brent
Spar. Several months of a Greenpeace-led protest caused Shell Oil to drop
plans to sink the oil platform in the ocean. Besides heated debates, hostil-
ities included a consumer boycott of Shell, the landing of activists on the
platform, and the rebombing of several Shell installations in Germany.
Greenpeace claimed that there were 5,000 tons of oil aboard the Brent
Spar, enough to cause severe damage to local ocean life. Shell estimated
that there were 53 tons on board. Independent assessors concluded that
the platform held between 75 and 100 tons of oil. Following the assess-
ment, Greenpeace apologized for a sampling error that led to the over-
estimate (Clover 1995). It went on to claim that, The campaign we ran
against dumping at sea wasnt dependent on any gures. Yet the indepen-
dent Norwegian assessors claimed that the pollution aboard the Brent Spar
was of no environmental signi cance. In short, science provides no clear
answers, but the powerful can be humbled when the public is aroused and
its voice ampli ed.
Beyond disproportionality an idea that has long been problematic
risk society issues pose a challenge to the sancti ed status of claims making
in the creation of social problems. Programmatically, social construction-
ists prefer to regard all issues as intrinsically the same and to attribute
differences in outcomes primarily to variations in claims making activities
(Koopmans and Duyvendak 1995). Pragmatically, risk society issues tend to
acquire a scienti c trajectory and accident histor y that are sticky, and
thereby constrain the claims that can be viably made by issue entrepre-
neurs (Ungar 1998a). While a trajectory still allows operatives some choices
in running a problem, their claim making activities are not nearly as mal-
leable as social constructionists claim, and can engender resistance or tur-
bulence if they try to ignore the sticky history of the problem. Consider a
key example (Ungar 1998a).
Scientists customarily de ne global warming as a future-oriented
problem, with effects predominately predicted for the middle or end of the
next centur y. From the start of scienti c claims-making in the late 1970s, a
future orientation became a de nitive characteristic of this problem for
numerous and often overlapping reasons. First, the doubling of pre-indus-
trial CO2 levels will not occur until about 2060. Doubling can be considered
a benchmark measure, a binary that is more intuitively clear than claiming
that levels have increased by (for instance) 40 per cent. Doubling was also
signi cant because scientists held that their computer models of the
climate system were too primitive to deal with smaller changes on a shorter-
term basis. At the time, scientists were just beginning to collect the long-
term observations that could be used to document climate changes over
time. In order to generate concern, the size of impacts delineated in scien-
ti c scenarios had to be suf ciently visible on a human scale (e.g., a meter
of sea-level rise, rather than a few centimeters) that they would take
decades to occur on a natural scale. Finally, since computer models only
Moral panic versus the risk society 287

predict general tendencies, particular extreme weather events cannot be

directly attributed to climate change.
To create social concern over this risk society issue, operatives have tried
to reverse this trajectory and to claim that strange weather and other evi-
dence are signs that climate change is already occurring.13 But the scien-
ti c community stands rmly behind the future orientation, extreme
events are largely dissociated from global warming in the media, and
claims makers who deny this sticky factor are either ignored or mocked by
the media (Ungar 1998a, 1999). In short, claims making on risk society
issues is, in comparison with conventional moral panic issues, hedged in by
more apparent and sticky issue trajectories, by a more equal balance of
power on the part of rival claim makers, and by a comparative absence of
distinguishable types of folk devils that evoke deep-seated hostility and fear.

CONCLUSION

The present analysis uses the developments associated with a risk society to
throw into relief some blinkers surrounding the moral panic-deviance
nexus. For all its pitfalls, one cannot wish away the reality that many soci-
ologists want a concept like moral panic as a tool to debunk particular
social claims or reactions. Taking a critical posture is not inherently un-
scienti c. Rather, it depends on whether or not observers have suf ciently
rigorous evidence to support the contention that particular reactions are
patently unwarranted. For most issues, the requisite evidence has been
lacking, and hence sociological pronouncements have not been particu-
larly authoritative.
Social anxieties raise the basic issue of safety. Moral panics, along with
earlier industrial risks, were largely contained in a discourse of safety.
Moral deviants could be identi ed (there were tests for witchcraft, with an
embedded ambiguity that always rendered it possible to nd deviants).
The deviants were then, at least theoretically, subject to social control.
Indeed, even if social reactions were more symbolic than practical, they
could still serve to af rm moral boundaries. And the latter could be effec-
tuated regardless of whether the claims exaggerated the nature of the
threat or not.
A safety discourse faces rupture in the risk society. Invisible contami-
nants, intractable scienti c uncertainties, unpredictable system effects, the
almost tragic calls for science-on-demand at the height of an accident, the
pr ying open of standard operating procedures, efforts to pass off the hot
potato, and potential latency effects that hinder closure of the threat
these all suggest that planning and pre-market testing have been replaced
by post-market coping, as things are wont to go boom in the night.
Hindsight notwithstanding, it can be presumed that British authorities
had no idea that announcing a tentative link between BSE and 10 possible
cases of CJD would touch off a marauding storm. As previously noted, the
288 Sheldon Ungar

public wants unambiguous answers pertaining to risk and safety, especially

for phenomena that are involuntarily imposed on them. A safety model
that boils down to the post-market coping with accidents is not readily sold
to a public whose demands for a yes/no risk evaluation hardly counten-
ances a cost-bene t analysis.
With this case and the accumulation of other comparable manufactured
risks, the idea that institutions connote safety is severely challenged.
According to Beck (1995: 128)
{ T} he political dynamism of the ecological issue is not a function of the
advancing devastation of nature; rather it arises from the facts that, on
the one hand, institutions claim to provide control and security falls
short and, on the other hand, in the same way, devastation is normalized
and legalized.
The gap between a safety discourse and the emergent discursive for-
mations and practices built around post-market efforts to cope with emer-
gencies opens up key questions for sociology. These include issues of trust,
expertise and authority, the fallibility of science, the nature of (once
hidden) institutional practices, the threat of immobility and, ultimately,
the af rmation of social order.

(Date accepted: October 2000) Sheldon Ungar

Division of Social Science, Sociology
University of Toronto at Scarborough
E-mail: ungar@scar.utoronto.ca

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The author would like to thank John Hannigan, Malcolm MacKinnon, and
an anonymous reviewer for helpful comments on earlier versions of this
paper.

NOTES

1. This summary is based on a careful commentators have adopted this term, its
reading of Toronto newspapers and weekly use is now commonplace but trivial. Jour-
magazines. It only paints the broad strokes; nalists, they observe, use moral panic to
the detailed ordering of events and refer to exaggerated or even falsified
miscues remain to be sorted out. threats.
2. The crisis has been so volatile that 4. The NandoTimes Health and
the Progressive Conservative government Science site covers up to a dozen new issues
in Ontario has backtracked on several daily.
issues and adopted an uncharacteristically 5. Jenkins (1999) interesting study of
apologetic and conciliatory tone. designer drugs, for example, focuses on
3. McRobbie and Thornton (1995) the media, enforcement agencies and
note that since journalists and other social Congressional investigations, but simply
Moral panic versus the risk society 289

ignores public reactions. Hay (1995) 12. Hay (1995: 198 italics in original)
insightfully analyses media rhetoric and observes that the James Bulger case is
tactics, but leaves the public as a residual characterized by the invisibility of the folk
categor y. devil , since the two ten-year-old children
6. According to McRobbie and Thorn- seen leading him away on videotape do not
ton (1995: 561), Cohens Folk Devils and t the stylized image of folk devils.
Moral Panics is rightfully a classic of media 13. From the point of view of selling the
sociology . . . problem, a future-orientation creates a
7. The distinction between intense clear liability. Speci cally, concern about
concern and fear is hardly addressed in the the future is discounted in institutional
literature (e.g., Goode and Ben-Yehuda thinking and in virtually ever y public
1994a: 33). Since these are primitive con- arena and economic calculation.
cepts, I note but not do pursue the
problem.
8. Whereas it would be mistaken to
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