Conceptualizing Moral Panic through a Moral Economy of Harm

Abstract

This paper explicates a critical theory of moral panic, arguing that there is an affinity to be discerned between the sociology of moral panic and the sociology of moral regulation. It is demonstrated how efforts to distance sociological investigations of moral regulation from studies of moral panic have been founded on a narrow treatment of the ways in which the latter have conceptualized panics uncritically as irrational societal overreactions stemming from some variant of `social anxiety.' Advocating a conceptualization which attends to the complexity of ways in which human conduct is governed, explanatory importance is situated in Valverde's formulation of `moral capital,' showing how her model not only enables a fusion between a political economy of the state and ethical subjectivity, but more crucial between panics and regulatory projects through the production of a moral economy of harm.