By Phillip Smith
/ AlterNet
At any given time, we face a limitless array of threats and possible
harms. For instance, right now, we could worry about terrorism, climate
change, gun violence, unemployment, immigration, food security or any
number of other concerns. Yet public concern over these issues is
neither constant nor necessarily linked with the actual level of threat.
What turns a potential threat or harm into a full-blown social problem? How does what the foreign-born work force is smoking become a national crisis, worthy of repressive action, as it has here repeatedly? And how does a few hundred thousand people smoking crack in the 1980s translate into a solid majority of Americans saying drugs were the number one problem in the country in the fall of 1989?
Social constructionists say, in short, that we define such panics into existence. For a phenomenon to become a social problem, the theory goes, someone—a claims maker—must define it as a problem and convince others that it is one.
When it comes to drugs, both interest groups and moral entrepreneurs have been leading claims makers. Moral entrepreneurs seek to claim that a given social phenomenon is a social problem, that they have the solution, and that they deserve the resources to deal with it. Interest groups that benefit by claiming a stake in the definition of drug use as problematic include law enforcement, the medical community (i.e. drug treatment providers), lobbyists for corporate (typically pharmaceutical) interests, community groups, and religious leaders among others.
Every social problem needs to have deviant groups orr individuals, people who aren't "like us" but who are the problem and who should be feared. This process allows us to unpack primal fears—about sex, race, and the Other—and use those fears to mobilize a social response. These appeals to fear are a powerful tool, and moral entrepreneurs and interest groups know it.
If moral entrepreneurs and interest groups manage to whip up enough fear and anxiety, they can create a full-blown moral panic, the widespread sense that the moral condition of society is deteriorating at a rapid pace, which can be conveniently used to distract from underlying, status quo-threatening social problems and exert social control over the working class or other rebellious sectors of society.
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What turns a potential threat or harm into a full-blown social problem? How does what the foreign-born work force is smoking become a national crisis, worthy of repressive action, as it has here repeatedly? And how does a few hundred thousand people smoking crack in the 1980s translate into a solid majority of Americans saying drugs were the number one problem in the country in the fall of 1989?
Social constructionists say, in short, that we define such panics into existence. For a phenomenon to become a social problem, the theory goes, someone—a claims maker—must define it as a problem and convince others that it is one.
When it comes to drugs, both interest groups and moral entrepreneurs have been leading claims makers. Moral entrepreneurs seek to claim that a given social phenomenon is a social problem, that they have the solution, and that they deserve the resources to deal with it. Interest groups that benefit by claiming a stake in the definition of drug use as problematic include law enforcement, the medical community (i.e. drug treatment providers), lobbyists for corporate (typically pharmaceutical) interests, community groups, and religious leaders among others.
Every social problem needs to have deviant groups orr individuals, people who aren't "like us" but who are the problem and who should be feared. This process allows us to unpack primal fears—about sex, race, and the Other—and use those fears to mobilize a social response. These appeals to fear are a powerful tool, and moral entrepreneurs and interest groups know it.
If moral entrepreneurs and interest groups manage to whip up enough fear and anxiety, they can create a full-blown moral panic, the widespread sense that the moral condition of society is deteriorating at a rapid pace, which can be conveniently used to distract from underlying, status quo-threatening social problems and exert social control over the working class or other rebellious sectors of society.
READ MORE
