This paper deals with some hidden political dimensions of moral panic theory. It concentrates on the implications of two related claims about what this battle meant: first, that moral panics are inherently normative and can be categorized as good and bad moral panics (the ones that we study are invariably bad); second, that students of moral panics have to take sides in this normative battle. There are differences in the ways this question was originally posed in the late 1960s and today.
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