Part IV
Awareness
Moral Conversion
Moral Panic
Part 4
 Those who construct moral meanings &
associate them with particular acts or
conditions by drawing on power & resources
of:
 Institutions
 Agencies
 Symbols or ideas
 Communication to audiences
Part 4
 Rule-creating: politicians, public crusaders,
teachers, parents, school administrators,
business leaders
 Rule-enforcing: police, prosecutors, judges,
and other informal agents of control such as
dormitory RAs
Part 4
 By individuals
 First Lady Nancy Reagan “Just Say No”;
 John Walsh for founding Missing and
Exploited Children’s Network and the TV
show America’s Most Wanted;
 Michael Moore for documentaries about big
business and violence
 By Groups –
 Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD)
 Group Against Smoking Pollution (GASP)
Part 4
 Moral entrepreneurs manufacture public
morality through a multi-stage process,
beginning first with the generation of
awareness of a problem
 Claims-making: danger-messages are
generated about specific issues such as
drunken-driving, hate crimes, second-hand
smoke, outsourcing, school violence
 In this stage will draw upon experts and
employ several rhetorical methods including
statistics and particular case examples
Part 4
 Claimsmakers must draw on elements of
drama, novelty, politics and cultural myths
to gain visibility for their issue
 They seek to attract media attention through
hunger strikes, demonstrations, civil
disobedience, marches, and picketing
 They seek support of sponsors and opinion
leaders – celebrities for public endorsements
Part 4
 Temporary but widespread concern about an
issue, promoted by much media attention
and sometimes legislative attention, takes
center stage
 Triggered by specific event at right moment,
draw attention to a specific group as a
target, have provocative content revealed,
and supported by formal and informal
communication outlets
Part 4
Money
Race and ethnicity
Gender
Age
Part 4
 Money: can be used for campaign
contributions to sway politicians to favor
and disfavor new laws, to fund favorable
research, and to fight restrictive lawsuits
 Race and ethnicity: dominant white group
behaviors less likely to be defined and
enforced as deviant
 Gender: women have less social power than
males are more subject to labeling
 Age: Younger and older people hold less
respect in our society
Part 4
Part 4
Differential Social Power
 Same powerful groups have greater
resources to avoid being labeled
 They may hire media and legal experts to
foster positive collective images:
 gun owners are “upstanding” citizens, drug or
alcohol companies promote favorable images
Part 4
 How do powerful groups avoid being
labeled?
 How are rules created and implemented?
Part 4
Part IV
Chapter 15
Part 4: Ch. 15
 The cultural origins and nature of anti-drug
appeals must be understood
 Drug wars & anti-drug crusades involving
marked public concern about a specific drug
or drugs are not simply reflections of
problems people are experiencing:
 Such drug scares are a recurring social
phenomena in their own right
Part 4: Ch. 15
 Alcohol: Temperance Movement to
Prohibition; primarily led by middle-class,
Protestant, white (WASP) Americans
reacting to drinking behaviors of Catholic
immigrants from Europe
Part 4: Ch. 15
 Anti-opium den laws of San Francisco in
1875 directed against Chinese immigrants
 Anti-marijuana laws of Great Depression
directed at Mexican Americans and later
connected to drop-out, hippie counterculture
that was corrupting morality of the youth
 More recently in 1980s the crack cocaine
scare, directed against urban, poor AfricanAmericans
Part 4: Ch. 15
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A kernel of truth
Media magnification
Politico-moral entrepreneurs
Professional interest groups
Historical context of conflict
Link a form of drug-use to a “dangerous
class”
Scapegoating a drug for a variety of social
problems
Part 4: Ch. 15
Part 4: Ch. 15
 First, claims about evil of drugs provide a
welcome vocabulary of attribution and
something to blame for social problems
 Second, American society, predicated on
Protestantism and capitalism emphasize selfcontrol;
 As a result loss of such control is to be avoided
at all cost!
 Third, we live today in a new consumer
culture that exacerbates the issue of selfcontrol;
 It is this on-going dynamic between self-
control and self-indulgence that empowers
our drug scares
Part 4: Ch. 15
 Of the drugs that are classified as illegal,
which ones are thought to be the most
serious or dangerous?
 What are drug scares and in what ways are
they correlated with minority groups?
Part 4: Ch. 15
Part IV
Chapter 16
Status Politics & the Creation of Deviance
 Deviance is socially constructed
 The ability to define and construct reality is
closely connected to the power structure of
society
 Status conflicts, and resultant status
degradation ceremonies of behavior
characteristic of a lower status, enhance the
status of those who condemn and abstain from
such behavior
 Deviance creates political competition in which
moral entrepreneurs originate moral crusades
aimed at generating reform
 Such moral crusades are dominated by members
of upper social strata of society
Part 4: Ch. 16
Status Politics & the Creation
of Deviance
 Moral crusades may be either assimilative or
coercive reforms
 Assimilative: sympathy for deviant engenders
integrative efforts aimed at lifting the
repentant to higher moral plane of the upper
status group (education)
 Coercive: deviants viewed as denying moral
and status superiority of reformers (law and
force)
 Moral entrepreneur cannot succeed alone:
must enlist broader public support
Part 4: Ch. 16
The Status Politics of Cigarette
Smoking
 Political dynamics involved in construction
of deviance may be seen in the efforts to end
smoking in public facilities
 Cigarette smoking universally accepted in
1940s, 1950s and 1960s until surgeon
general’s report on health risks of smoking
in 1964
 More people today see smoking as socially
deviant, unclean and intrusive to others
Part 4: Ch. 16
The Status Politics of Cigarette
Smoking
 Abstinence and bodily purity are key to
nonsmoker’s claim of moral superiority
 Antismoking movement has targeted a
lifestyle typical of the working classes;
 Moral entrepreneurs crusading against
smoking are of higher social status, the
“knowledge” class of educators, therapeutic
and counseling professions
 Early remedial efforts focused on publicizing
the perils of smoking, reflecting a strategy of
assimilative reform through education:
 Resulted in decline in smoking
Part 4: Ch. 16
The Status Politics of Cigarette
Smoking
 Remaining smokers have become redefined as
enemy
 Focus of social control efforts to ban smoking in
public places as evidence mounted on adverse
effects of smoking on nonusers
 Success of antismoking crusade rooted in moral
crusaders ability to mobilize power, aided by
government campaigns, and widely publicized
health risks of smoking
 Success of this moral crusade also related to
deviance being connected with lower social status
groups, whose stigmatization reinforce existing
power structure
Part 4: Ch. 16
 Study hypothesis: supporters of smoking ban
would be of higher social status than those
opposing it
 Site of research: Shasta County, California
 Referendum to ban smoking in public places
passed by 56% majority; special election by
those opposing it lost again by 58% majority;
 Ordinance went into effect July,1993
Part 4: Ch. 16
 Interviews with five leading moral
entrepreneurs and five status quo defenders
 Primary concern of moral entrepreneurs was
health but three also made negative
comments about smoking, thereby degrading
the status of smokers
Part 4: Ch. 16
 “Smoking is no longer an acceptable
action”
 “Smoke stinks”
 “It is just a dirty and annoying habit”
Part 4: Ch. 16
 Status quo defenders also had two
arguments: a person’s right (freedom) and
business profits
 Smoking viewed as a constitutionally
protected right of free individuals
 Worries about loss of smoking customers
with a ban
Part 4: Ch. 16
 Debate between proponents of ban to
prohibit smoking in public places versus
those defenders of individuals’ right to
decide where to smoke reflect a difference in
social power
 Winners in moral and stigma contests
generally represent higher social classes,
involve symbolic dimension, and this was
reflected in current study
Part 4: Ch. 16
 Is the association of tobacco with lower-
status persons a factor in the crusade
against smoking in public facilities?
 Compare anti-smoking campaigns to those of
the tobacco company and its glorification in
the movies. How “mixed” are the messages?
Part 4: Ch. 16