A review of the literature and ethnographic data from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United States, and the United Kingdom on the research ethics review process suggest that moral panics can become triggers for punctuated equilibrium in the review process at both the macro and microlevel, albeit with significantly different levels of magnitude and impact. These data suggest that neither the development of the ethics review process nor the process itself proceeds gradually, but both are characterized by periodic major (...) shifts evoked by particular events or situations that result in varying levels of moral panic. One way to deal with this moral panic is to increase the regulation of research and the depth or intensity of the scrutiny of applications under ethics review. Moral panics at the macrolevel influence those at the microlevel and, if the moral panic evoked at the local or microlevel is not satisfactorily resolved, it will evoke action at a higher level. Understanding the evolution of research ethics review processes from this perspective might help make actions by ethics committees and policy makers more understandable and help explain why attention to research ethics are heightened at particular points in time. It may also provide a basis for developing recommendations for adaptations to the ethics review process and policy at both the local and macrolevel. (shrink)

Marilyn Mason, education officer of the British Humanist Association, asks whether an adequate moral education must involve religion, and reflects on the way that attitudes to moral education have changed over the last fifty years.

This article offers a semiotic perspective on the debate over critical race theory (CRT) bans in the United States. It presents the debate as unfolding in three stages. In the first stage, CRT is created by an opportunistic journalist as a catchall category for white grievances, and the bans themselves are seen as consistent with freedom of speech, and Martin Luther King Jr.’s vision of a colorblind society. A semiotic rupture, occasioned by Timothy Snyder’s 2021, _New York Times Magazine_ article (...) “The War on History is a War on Democracy,” ushered in a second stage. By comparing CRT bans to Vladimir Putin’s use of law to deny Soviet past crimes (especially regarding Ukraine), Snyder exposed the CRT bans as willful acts of forgetting past crimes, while indirectly highlighting Putin’s own anti-woke initiatives. This led to the third stage, in which some CRT ban supporters began to view critical race theory as form of communism. Sometimes this use was tactical; in other instances, it reflected a belief that a conspiracy theory, one consistent with white nationalism, according to which cultural Marxists were destroying American society from within. (shrink)

This paper examines some of the moral panics around hyperactive children, the construction of Attention Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorder, and the lure of Ritalin in turning kids identified as at risk into successful, productive individuals. Through a historicization of the child as a psychiatric subject, we try to demonstrate Ritalin's part in the uneven development of modern trends towards the pathologization of everyday life, a developing continuum between normality and abnormality, and an emphasis on the malleability of children and the importance (...) of environment in their upbringing. We conclude that Ritalin is a part of modernity's project of turning people into individuals—in this case, a kind of US transcendence fantasy—which, along with discourses and institutions, promises to transform young subjects and biocosmetically alter their futures. (shrink)

The notions of family and community disintegration, supposedly brought on by focus on children's rights, are only a form of moral panic.

This paper examines some of the moral panics around hyperactive children, the construction of Attention Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorder, and the lure of Ritalin in turning kids identified as “at risk” into successful, productive individuals. Through a historicization of the child as a psychiatric subject, we try to demonstrate Ritalin's part in the uneven development of modern trends towards the pathologization of everyday life, a developing continuum between normality and abnormality, and an emphasis on the malleability of children and the importance (...) of environment in their upbringing. We conclude that Ritalin is a part of modernity's project of turning people into individuals—in this case, a kind of US transcendence fantasy—which, along with discourses and institutions, promises to transform young subjects and biocosmetically alter their futures. (shrink)

Deceptive communication and misinformation are crucial issues that are currently having a significant impact on social life. Parallel to the important work of identifying misinformation on digital platforms is understanding why such material proliferates. One approach to answering this question is to attempt to understand the values that are being targeted by misinformation as a means of interpreting the underlying social bonds that are at stake. This study examines the kinds of social bonds that are communed around and contested in (...) a corpus of YouTube video comments about the viral internet hoax ‘The Momo Challenge’. A social semiotic approach to ‘ambient affiliation’ is used to investigate how these bonds are negotiated in this digital discourse. This approach involves establishing the types of personae who were negotiating meaning in the comments on the basis of the values that they recurrently shared, deferred or disputed. The analysis suggests that, in addition to concern over whether Momo was real and dangerous, there was a deeper moral panic about parenting in the digital age and the legitimacy of institutions such as schools and media as brokers of knowledge. (shrink)

This study examined video game–playing aggression among graduate and undergraduate students at Rochester Institute of Technology in upstate New York. The following three research questions were posed: In the context of video game playing, what differences are there in levels of aggression in relation to sex? What differences are there in levels of aggression and type of video games played? Are aggression and length of video game playing related? A nonprobability sample of students (N = 175) was selected and electronically (...) surveyed. The Buss–Perry Aggression Questionnaire, a widely used self-reported measure, was used to assess aggression. No significant difference was found between men and women with regard to levels of aggression, and no statistically significant relationship was found between aggression and length of video game playing (r = −.05, p =.52). However, significant differences were found in levels of aggression between playing and nonplaying respondents of action role-playing (t = −1.48, df = 175, p =.01) and role-playing video games (t = −1.24, df = 175, p =.02). Players of role-playing games had lower levels of aggression than nonplayers. Since role-playing requires one to take the part of another person, empathy might play a role in reduced levels of aggression. Although exposure to violent video games has been related to decreased empathy, role-playing games show just the opposite. It is suggested that controversies regarding violent video games might best be explained by moral panic theory and that competitive games may attract more aggressive players. (shrink)

Sociological research on moral panics, long understood as “struggles for cultural power,” has focused on the social groups and media conditions that enable moral panics to emerge, and on the consequences of moral panics for the social control systems of societies. In this article I turn instead to modeling the specific cultural process of how the conditions for a moral panic are turned into an actual moral panic, moving the understanding of moral (...) panic away from its Durkheimian origins and towards a process-relational cultural sociology. Drawing on Roland Barthes’ theory of myth and Kenneth Burke’s dramatism, the paper posits the cultural process of resignification via synecdoche and metanarrative as the driver of the disproportion, concern, hostility, consensus, and volatility of moral panics. This process can be carefully traced in the case of the Salem Witch Trials; a retrospective reading reveals the same process at work in the “Mods and Rockers” panic analyzed by Stanley Cohen. Beyond moral panics, theorizing resignification as a non-exclusive counterpoint to framing and ideational embeddedness enriches the theoretical repertoire of cultural sociology. “Deep culture” and mythological signification can, using the schema proposed here, be understood as practical accomplishments—rhetorical responses to particular situations that, when performed successfully, legitimate violence and other forms of domination. (shrink)

The spread of liberal individualism to the family is often portrayed as deeply inimical to the welfare of children and young people. In this view, the family is the bastion of the private and the antithesis of the contractual, rights-oriented model that underpins public life. This chapter examines that proposition critically.

The paper re-examines the underachievement debate from the perspective of the 'discourse of derision' that surrounds much writing in this area. It considers the contradictions and inconsistencies which underpin much of the discourse -- from a reinterpretation of examination scores, to the conflation of the concepts of 'under' and 'low' achievement and finally to the lack of consensus on a means of defining and measuring the term underachievement. In doing so, this paper suggests a more innovative approach for understanding, re-evaluating (...) and perhaps rejecting the notion of underachievement. (shrink)

In some instances, the criminal justice system is affected by a moral panic; that is, by an exaggerated social reaction to an assumed threat to moral values. When influenced by moral panic, courts...

We examine 575 randomly selected articles on Zimbabwean immigrants from the South African Media database to expose discourses of exclusion and the production of the psycho-social condition – moral panic. We use critical discourse analysis, notions of remediation and immediacy to scrutinize discourse structures and other discursive strategies designed to conceal mediation and authorial prejudices, and to make the reader ‘experience’ the actual content. In addition to making the anti-immigrant rhetoric appear legitimate, and the danger immediate and real, (...) we argue that the apparent seamless content is often biased by selection and structured in such a way as to deny voice to immigrants and their advocates. Among other things, we conclude that since the readers’ interpretations are filtered through lenses of subjectivities defined by communicative contexts characterized by job scarcity, poverty, crime and wanting healthcare, the news content heightens anxiety and miseducates more than it enlightens readers on migration issues. Hence there is a danger of SAM becoming unwitting conveyors of the same vices they preach against. (shrink)

Tell us what you think This essay was first posted at Edge (www.edge.org) and is reprinted with permission. It is the Preface to the book 'What Is Your Dangerous Idea?: Today's Leading Thinkers on the Unthinkable,' published by HarperCollins. Write to [email protected]..

Given the original founders, texts, and location of Critical Legal Studies, its association with the 1960s counterculture is uncontroversial. However, this paper interrogates the assumption that CLS is itself a counterculture by proxy. Drawing from seminal work on subcultures, moral panics, and the emerging field of minor jurisprudence, this paper recategorises Critical Legal Studies as a legal subculture. An argument of clarification underpins this recategorisation, addressing the relationship between CLS and the dominant legal framework, its relationship with the counterculture, (...) and why the reactions CLS received from the legal community were to be expected. (shrink)

In this paper I attempt to respond to the worries of the source incompatibilist, and try to sketch a naturalistically plausible, compatibilist notion of self-authorship and control that I believe captures important aspects of the folk intuitions regarding freedom and responsibility. It is my hope to thus offer those moved by source incompatibilist worries a reason not to adopt what P.F. Strawson called “the obscure and panicky metaphysics of Libertarianism” (P. F. Strawson, 1982) or the panic-inducing moral austerity (...) of the hard incompatibilist (Pereboom, 2001). I am well aware that many great minds have sunk their teeth into this problem and have not prevailed, but at the very least, I hope to become clearer on where the sticking points are. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Teachers are regularly blamed–especially in times of moral panic–for failing to set a good example and teach proper moral standards to their pupils. As well as familiar issues about moral values and the legitimacy of different modes of moral pedagogy this also raises the question of the degree of connection between a teacher's private and personal values, attitudes and behaviour and his or her professional conduct and responsibilities. Two common responses to these problems–paternalism and (...) liberalism–are here criticised and an alternative perspective on the moral role of the teacher is sought, drawing on communitarian insights into the nature of moral and other values and their function in human affairs. (shrink)

Teachers are regularly blamed–especially in times of moral panic–for failing to set a good example and teach proper moral standards to their pupils. As well as familiar issues about moral values and the legitimacy of different modes of moral pedagogy this also raises the question of the degree of connection between a teacher’s private and personal values, attitudes and behaviour and his or her professional conduct and responsibilities. Two common responses to these problems–paternalism and liberalism–are (...) here criticised and an alternative perspective on the moral role of the teacher is sought, drawing on communitarian insights into the nature of moral and other values and their function in human affairs. (shrink)

Calling Citizens to a Moral Way of Life: A Dutch Example of Moralized Politics This article offers a sociological analysis of the moral revisions that accompany welfare state reforms in the Netherlands. It is argued that Dutch welfare state reforms after the Cold War rely on moral discourses in particular and moral language in general to legitimize and effectuate policy measures. The Dutch reformers have been pursuing a set of strategies of moralization designed to adjust the (...) Dutch welfare state to the new, post-Cold War situation, in which social policies are redesigned to support the operation of global markets. This article seeks to show how this "moral revision" has been taking place by consulting data sources provided by Dutch media, policy documents, council reports, advices, speeches, and newspaper interviews. This implies that special attention is paid to the rhetoric, language, tones, symbolism, metaphors and moral images used and propagated by moral revisionists, elites and media, their definitions of the prevailing moral situation and of the desired one, their formulation of desired values and norms and the ways in which moral panics are aroused. Three recent Dutch policy innovations, namely the national debate on norms and values, the Charter Responsible Citizenship and the family policy memorandum, are interpreted as political strategies to re-engineer the new morality that can sustain a reformed state. (shrink)

Looking back, the moral panic that precipitated the decimation of horror comics in the 1950s seems quaint, yet concerns about the psychological impact of violent media on consumers have never disappeared. In this article, I outline a particular type of psychological impact we ought to take seriously when evaluating the moral status of entertainment. I then consider (a) ways in which comics seem immune from claims that they create this kind of impact for their readers, as well (...) as (b) ways in which we might think that comics generate special instances of moral danger for readers. (shrink)

This paper adds another argument to the rising tide of panic about robots and AI. The argument is intended to have broad civilization-level significance, but to involve less fanciful speculation about the likely future intelligence of machines than is common among many AI-doomsayers. The argument claims that the rise of the robots will create a crisis of moral patiency. That is to say, it will reduce the ability and willingness of humans to act in the world as responsible (...) moral agents, and thereby reduce them to moral patients. Since that ability and willingness is central to the value system in modern liberal democratic states, the crisis of moral patiency has a broad civilization-level significance: it threatens something that is foundational to and presupposed in much contemporary moral and political discourse. I defend this argument in three parts. I start with a brief analysis of an analogous argument made in pop culture. Though those arguments turn out to be hyperbolic and satirical, they do prove instructive as they illustrates a way in which the rise of robots could impact upon civilization, even when the robots themselves are neither malicious nor powerful enough to bring about our doom. I then introduce the argument from the crisis of moral patiency, defend its main premises and address objections. (shrink)

This article looks at the politics of successive Conservative governments in Britain in the 1980s and ‘90s through the lens of the increasing politicisation of Paganisms in that period. A wave of moral panics in the late ‘80’s and early ‘90s concerning marginal communities – such as Ravers, New Age travellers and anti-road protesters – and their ‘riotous assemblies’, culminated in the Conservative Government of John Major enacting The Criminal Justice and Public Order Act of 1994. This was seen (...) by these communities as legislation against alternative lifestyles and, in some respects, an infringement of spiritual freedom. Using the case study of technoshamanism – a Pagan meeting of ‘rave’ culture and neo-shamanism – I wish to examine how the political and Pagan religious landscapes of ‘80s and ‘90s Britain intersected and led to politically engaged forms of Pagan practice often centred around grassroots lifestyle and environmental politics. This will be explored with especial reference to the politicisation of The Spiral Tribe, a technoshamanic collective of the early ‘90s, and their increasing involvement in resisting the 1994 Act and promotion of campaigns such as Reclaim the Streets. (shrink)

The social status of teaching profession has rapidly plummeted in the Turkish society. This study discusses the societal aspect of social status and aims to critically analyse the representations of mainstream media about Religious Culture and Moral Knowledge teachers in Turkey as one of the societal reflections of teachers’ social statues. Although the dimensions of media effect on societal perceptions are not fully located, an indirect effect cannot be ignored. The study’s methodology, T. A. van Dijk’s critical discourse analysis (...) is recruited for its comprehensive interpretation opportunities alongside with the thematic analysis, which is recruited to categorise the themes due to the ten-year duration chosen to analyse the news on the media. The examined examples of news are categorised into three themes as positive individual representations, negative individual representations and professional representations. Reflections of reactive news, which is a sub-category for individual negative representations, are found to be the section where the ideological stances/worldviews mostly are detected. Teachers’ educational actions/expressions within the classroom or actions/expressions outside school are determined to be included in the news in a way to create public discussion and moral panic. The hidden intentions and purposes behind these choices are open to discussion. The study recruits thematic analysis and Van Dijk’s critical discourse analysis for analysis purposes. It is found that the majority of news is negative examples and represented with the striking headlines. Within the ten years duration explored, a transformation has been identified in both the cases, which are the sources of the news and how they are presented in the newspapers. As a conclusion, it is argued that the Turkish media should adopt a more positive and realistic attitude towards reflecting teachers’ social representation. (shrink)

It is commonly believed that people become selfish and turn to looting, price gouging, and other immoral behaviour in emergencies. This has been the basis for an argument justifying extraordinary measures in emergencies. It states that if emergencies are not curtailed, breakdown of moral norms threaten (‘the moral black hole’). Using the example of natural disasters, we argue that the validity of this argument in non-antagonistic situations, i.e. situations other than war and armed conflict, is highly questionable. Available (...) evidence suggests that people in such emergencies typically do not display panic reactions or exaggerated selfishness, and that phenomena such as looting and price gouging are rare. Furthermore, a version of the moral-black-hole argument based on the mere possibility of a moral black hole occurring runs into problems similar to those of Pascal’s Wager. We conclude that we should be wary against applying the moral-black-hole argument to non-antagonistic cases. (shrink)

Medicine is the field of knowledge and set of clinical practices, characterized by the presence of politics and ethics on all the levels. Politics should be treated as a domain of power, which aims to make strategic decisions concerning health of the citizens leading to form socially accepted objectives of health care policy. Ethics sets axiological frames for morally just decisions both political and medical in the field of health care. The article analyzes the reasons of conflicts and moral (...) dilemmas in the health care system. Decisions which are made within health care system should accomplish five criteria: medical, economical, social, legal and axiological. The term “moral panic” is used to illustrate situations concerning corruption and moral atrophy of doctors. (shrink)

Suicide attack is the most virulent and horrifying form of terrorism in the world today. The mere rumor of an impending suicide attack can throw thousands of people into panic. This occurred during a Shi‘a procession in Iraq in late August 2005, causing hundreds of deaths. Although suicide attacks account for a minority of all terrorist acts, they are responsible for a majority of all terrorism-related casualties, and the rate of attacks is rising rapidly across the globe. During 2000–2004, (...) there were 472 suicide attacks in 22 countries, killing more than 7,000 and wounding tens of thousands. Most have been carried out by Islamist groups claiming religious motivation, also known as jihadis. Rand Corp. vice president and terrorism analyst Bruce Hoffman has found that 80 percent of suicide attacks since 1968 occurred after the September 11 attacks, with jihadis representing 31 of the 35 responsible groups. More suicide attacks occurred in 2004 than in any previous year, and 2005 has proven even more deadly, with attacks in Iraq alone averaging more than one per day, according to data gathered by the U.S. military. The July 2005 London and Sinai bombings, a second round of bombings at tourist destinations in Bali in October, coordinated hotel bombings in Jordan in November, the arrival of suicide bombings in Bangladesh in December, a record year of attacks in Afghanistan, and daily bombings in Iraq have spurred renewed interest in suicide terrorism, with recent analyses stressing the strategic logic, organizational structure, and rational calculation involved. Whereas they once primarily consisted of organized campaigns by militarily weak forces aiming to end the perceived occupation of their homeland, as argued by University of Chicago political scientist Robert Pape in Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism, suicide attacks today serve as banner actions for a thoroughly modern, global diaspora inspired by religion and claiming the role of vanguard for a massive, media-driven transnational political awakening. Living mostly in the diaspora and undeterred by the threat of retaliation against original home populations, jihadis, who are frequently middle-class, secularly well educated, but often “born-again” radical Islamists, including converts from Christianity, embrace apocalyptic visions for humanity's violent salvation. In Muslim countries and across western Europe, bright and idealistic Muslim youth, even more than the marginalized and dispossessed, internalize the jihadi story, illustrated on satellite television and the Internet with the ubiquitous images of social injustice and political repression with which much of the Muslim world's bulging immigrant and youth populations intimately identifies. From the suburbs of Paris to the jungles of Indonesia, I have interviewed culturally uprooted and politically restless youth who echo a stunningly simplified and decontextualized message of martyrdom for the sake of global jihad as life's noblest cause. They are increasingly as willing and even eager to die as they are to kill. The policy implications of this change in the motivation, organization, and calculation of suicide terrorism may be as novel as hitherto neglected. Many analysts continue to claim that jihadism caters to the destitute and depraved, the craven and criminal, or those who “hate freedom.” Politicians and pundits have asserted that jihadism is nihilistic and immoral, with no real program or humanity. Yet, jihadism is none of these things. Do we really understand the causes of today's suicide terrorism? Do suicide attacks stem mainly from a political cause, such as military occupation? Do they need a strong organization, such as Al Qaeda? What else could be done to turn the rising tide of martyrdom? (shrink)

In Past, Chinese traveler Fa-hien (14th century) to Ibn batuta (14th century) or from Nicola Kanti (15th century) to Queen Elizabeth (20th Century), every travelers and scholars are attracted by the charms and fame of Bangladesh. Ibn batuta described Bengal as “a hell full of bounties” and “wealthiest” land of the world”. But now a day, along this progress anxiety has proportionately increased. In this present age, science and technology are the easily available to common people. The world has come (...) to a handful but yet people are still not so happy. As if the demand is insatiable. So, anxiety, apathy, intolerance, fear and panic are increased. Morality is deemed declining. Why immorality among young increased is a concern? Mark Twain said, “Always do what is right, it will gratify half of mankind”. What is right? a vantage point is needed to know. Our moral values which guide us and aids us in our conscious mobility in life. This article tries to find out the cause root of immorality among young generation and how to protect young generation from this moral deterioration. (shrink)

The implementation of care robotics in care settings is identified by some authors as a disruptive innovation, in the sense that it will upend the praxis of care. It is an open ethical question whether this alleged disruption will also have a transformative impact on established ethical concepts and principles. One prevalent worry is that the implementation of care robots will turn deception into a routine component of elderly care, at least to the extent that these robots will function as (...) simulacra for something that they are not (i.e. human caregivers). At face value, this may indeed seem to indicate a concern for how this technology may upend existing practices and relationships within a care setting. Yet, on closer inspection, this reaction may rather point to a rediscovery and a revaluation of a particularly well-entrenched value or virtue, i.e. veracity. The virtue of veracity is one of the values that is mobilized to argue against a substitution of human caregivers (while a combination of care robots and human caregivers is much more accepted). The subject of this paper is to explore how the moral panic surrounding care robots should not so much be interpreted as an anticipated and probable disruptor in a care setting, but rather as a sensitizing – in a way conservationist – argument that identifies veracity as an established value that is supposed to be protected and advanced in present day and future care settings. (shrink)

The need to re-examine established ways of thinking about secularism and its relationship to feminism has arisen in the context of the confluence of a number of developments including: the increasing dominance of the ‘clash of civilizations’ thesis; the expansion of postmodern critiques of Enlightenment rationality to encompass questions of religion; and sustained critiques of the ‘secularization thesis’. Conflicts between the claims of women's equality and the claims of religion are well-documented vis-à-vis all major religions and across all regions. The (...) ongoing moral panic about the presence of Islam in Europe, marked by a preoccupation with policing Muslim women's dress, reminds us of the centrality of women and gender power relations in the interrelation of religion, culture and the state. Added to postmodern and other critiques of the secular-religious binary, most sociological research now contradicts the equation of modernization with secularization. This article focuses on the challenges that these developments pose to politically oriented feminist thinking and practice. It argues that non-oppressive feminist responses require a new critical engagement with secularism as a normative principle in democratic, multicultural societies. To inform this process, the author maps and links discussions across different fields of feminist scholarship, in the sociology of religion and in political theory. She organizes the main philosophical traditions and fault lines that form the intellectual terrain at the intersection of feminism, religion and politics in two broad groups: feminist critiques of the Enlightenment critique of religion; and feminist scholarship at the critical edges of the Enlightenment tradition. The author argues that notwithstanding the fragmented nature of feminist debates in this area, common ground is emerging across different politically oriented approaches: all emphasize ‘democracy’ and the values that underpin it as the larger discursive frame in which the principle of secularism can be redefined with emancipatory intent in a neo-secular age. (shrink)

'Animals sell papers' : the value of animal stories -- Media and animal debates : welfare, rights, 'animal lovers' and terrorists -- Stars : animal performers -- Wild : authenticity and getting closer to nature -- Experimental : the visibility of experimental animals -- Farmed : selling animal products -- Hunted : recreational killing -- Monsters : horrors and moral panics -- Beginning at the end : re-imagining human-animal relations.

Political polarization is a major source of conflict in multiparty democracies, and there is evidence that it is on the rise. Polarization can be analyzed as an emotional phenomenon. First, it is governed by negative feelings towards members of opposing political factions. Members of opposing political factions regard each other with contempt, fear, and disgust, among other negative feelings. Second, it is associated with ideologies: beliefs that are held with a degree of passion that is disproportionate to the available reasons, (...) 55–64, 2012). Third, and less obviously, polarization relates to moral identity—a construct that has an important relationship to emotions. There is evidence that polarization can be impacted by partisanship above and beyond ideology, and partisanship is linked to construction of the self. That is, people who identify with a party sometimes come to see the dictates of that party as authoritative, independent of the political beliefs that happen to hold. Such political identification often comes to be seen as core to one’s personal identity. Self-construction, in turn, is enforced by emotions, including, for example, the anxiety associated with losing one’s identity. Here, links between emotion and polarization are explored, touching on related issues such as echo chambers, moral panics, and xenophobia. (shrink)

A prevalent political narrative is that we are facing an epistemological crisis, where many citizens no longer care about truth and facts. Yet the view that we are living in a post-truth era relies on some implicit questionable empirical and normative assumptions. The post-truth rhetoric converts epistemic issues into motivational issues, treating people with whom we disagree as if they no longer believe in or care about truth. This narrative is also dubious on epistemic, moral, and political grounds. It (...) is epistemically dubious in being largely insensitive to the problem of complexity in politics; it is morally dubious because “post-truth” is often a derogatory label for individuals or groups that are deemed stupid, irrational, or morally compromised; and it is a politically toxic neologism because it purports to use the language of ‘truth’ as a weapon against power, yet these truth-claims are often themselves attempts to exert power over others by delegitimizing their perspectives. While it may seem as if truth and democracy are on especially bad terms lately, politics and truth have long had a vexed relationship, and moral panics about the value of truthfulness in politics are as old as politics itself. (shrink)

Accompanying the ‘moral panic’ about an obesity epidemic is a growth in female body dissatisfaction and dieting. This article maintains that feminist theology must play a vital role in returning the future to fat bodies at a time when the estimated spending on diet products in the US alone equals the projected costs of obesity. The theological nature of this task is essential given the way harmful theological systems and associations remerge within commercial dieting settings to help demonize (...) food, appetite and eating and reestablish ancient associations between women, food and sin. This article develops a feminist theology of food and fat by drawing on the lived experiences of women who diet. Engaging with my own ethnography, I argue that feminist theology must challenge the discourses of sin and salvation which resource the ‘secular’ commercial dieting industry, and instead construct theologies which are ‘good to taste’ and nourishing to our bodies. (shrink)

This paper examines the polemical nature of anti-racist education and discourse in America today. On one side of this issue are those who think of the efforts toward inclusion, diversity, and the pursuit of social justice in academia as serving positive ends. On the other side are those who oppose and vilify such efforts as evidence of the destructive ethos of liberal education. This has led to a situation where universities and schools across the country have seen professors and teachers, (...) including philosophers, experience backlash for speaking seriously and courageously about confronting the problem of racism in society. One recent example of this anomaly is the kind of faux outrage or moral panic that drives the hysteria against Critical Race Theory, an inquiry that examines the intersection of race and law in the United States, as well as unearthing the reality of structural racism in America, often disguised in the mainstream liberal approaches to racial justice. This faux moral panic has been used by legislatures across the country, as the raison d’être, to pass bans and enforce policies or rules that restricts how professors (including philosophers), and teachers can talk about race, systemic racism, structural oppression, or the problem of racial injustice in the classroom. In this paper, I explore how this polemical situation creates significant challenges and unique possibilities for the discourse of philosophy, especially for those who are interested in becoming antiracist philosophers, in the context of such legal rules and restrictions. This is not for the faint of heart. (shrink)

‘Contract cheating’ has recently emerged as a form of academic dishonesty. It involves students contracting out their coursework to writers in order to submit the purchased assignments as their own work, usually via the internet. This form of cheating involves epistemic and ethical problems that are continuous with older forms of cheating, but which it also casts in a new form. It is a concern to educators because it is very difficult to detect, because it is arguably more fraudulent than (...) some other forms of plagiarism, and because it appears to be connected to a range of systemic problems within modern higher education. This paper provides an overview of the information and literature thus far available on the topic, including its definition, the problems it involves, its causal factors, and the ways in which educators might respond. We argue that while contract cheating is a concern, some of the suggested responses are themselves problematic, and that best practice responses to the issue should avoid moral panic and remain focussed on supporting honest students and good academic practice. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 61.2 (2000) 223-240 [Access article in PDF] The "Survival of the Fittest" and the Origins of Social Darwinism Gregory Claeys * In late September 1838 a young man, aged 29, a former medical student and amateur naturalist, who had spent several years in the South Pacific studying plant and animal life, but who remained puzzled as to why "favourable variants" of each species (...) survived while "unfavourable variants" were destroyed, sat perusing a book, as he later recalled, "for amusement." 1 The work which provoked Charles Darwin was T. R. Malthus's Essay on Population (1798), which he later claimed first suggested to him the idea that "on the whole the best fitted live." This idea Darwin would popularize through the notion of the "struggle for existence," a phrase which he famously claimed to use as a "metaphor" but which meant simply "the doctrine of Malthus applied with manifold force to the whole animal and vegetable kingdoms." 2 That application resulted in the publication [End Page 223] of the Origin of Species in 1859, an occasion hailed as "the greatest event of Queen Victoria's reign," 3 even "by far the most important... in the history of the modern West." 4 It is well known, too, that Darwin's appreciation of Malthus was not unique even among naturalists. The year before the Origin of Species appeared another young man, Alfred Russel Wallace, aged 25, encountered the very same book. "There suddenly," he later recalled, flashed upon him "the idea of the survival of the fittest." 5 We know Wallace today, thus, as the codiscoverer of theory of natural selection, who presented a paper jointly with Darwin at the Linnean Society on that momentous evening of 1 July 1858 to mark their brilliant achievement. 6This curious coincidence has often been noted, but its ramifications require further assessment. This article examines some crucial nineteenth-century sources of the idea of the "survival of the fittest," which came to underpin many of the social and political doctrines later associated with the theory of natural selection, and also what were regarded as some of the limits of this idea. 7 It contends that there was in fact far more than mere coincidence in the obviously provocative role played by Malthus's Essay for both Darwin and Wallace. 8 It argues, [End Page 224] therefore, against the presumption of tacit causality--logically implicit in the concept of "Social Darwinism" 9 --that much of the social and political theory which nominally invoked Darwin was fundamentally derived from, as opposed to being reinforced by, the principles of natural selection. It challenges the view that the logic of discovery in the natural sciences, in other words, induced parallel or derivative concepts in the social sciences and that the "survival of the fittest" emerged first as a natural, and then mutated into a social concept. Instead it suggests that what was specific about much of Social Darwinism resulted from several shifts in thought in mid-Victorian Britain to which Darwin himself also responded and which therefore also vitally influenced his own development.No doubt, of course, this assertion of causation contains some truth. Darwin was extraordinarily widely read and extraordinarily influential. We are all aware of the great theological debates associated with his name in late Victorian Britain, of the counter-attack against Darwin begun by Bishop Wilberforce in June 1860, and of the tenacious war of attrition conducted by "Darwin's bulldog," T. H. Huxley, who coined the term "agnostic" in 1869 to define the lack of scientific evidence for the existence of God. 10 Much has been written of the moral panic and growing loss of religious faith, paralleling the course of Darwin's own "reluctant agnosticism," which followed the conclusion that human beings had been levelled to the status of animals and deprived of a special Providential creation as well as any divine purpose in the perpetuation of their species. In history a tremendous impetus was given to the search for certain laws of social development. In social... (shrink)

Over time, we in English departments have resigned ourselves to prophecies of doom. Our discipline is said to be in terminal decline, and civilization with it. Usually, it is our own fault: the value of our work, so the story has gone, is threatened from within, whether by submission to esoteric theories on the one hand, or by dissipation into the banalities of cultural studies on the other. Our only hope, they tell us, is the immediate restoration of the old (...) pieties, as these were cemented in the nineteenth century: literature teaches moral values; poets redeem from decay the divine element in mortal beings; a knowledge of the best that has been thought and said makes us more humane.Moral panics come and go .. (shrink)