Youth as a Site of Moral Panic
Youth culture, in any society, is a complex structure that is difficult if not impossible to fully define in a finite number of words. In a way, its definition is fleeting, constantly being reshaped by the people interacting with it. Yet the relationship between youth culture and its surrounding institutions depicts a repeating history, despite the fact that youth culture differs among various eras and nations. As youth redefine the norms of their elder generations, they produce a potential for what Professor Stanley Cohen calls a “moral panic.” In a moral panic, a “condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests” (Cohen 2002: 1). In the case of youth culture, youth who challenge the morals upheld by their societies’ institutional powers are often labeled as “deviant” or “delinquent” (Cohen 2002: 2). Whether the challenges are merely liberal views or outright violence, these “deviant” behaviors are seen as a threat to maintaining traditional order, and as a result, youth are made a focal point of scholarly analysis and institutional correction.
Yet why are youth so historically seen as a site of crisis? On one hand, for the sake of preserving traditional values, the moral development of youth is often held at an utmost importance by institutional powers. Youth are commonly seen as the future generation of leaders; the ideals, morals, and knowledge they carry with them ultimately become the societal foundation for years to come. On the other hand, youth themselves represent an ideal object of moral panic, as per Cohen’s analysis. Youth not only tend to embody more radical views than the older generations, but also present “a soft target, easily denounced, with little power and… without even access to the battlefields of cultural politics” (Cohen 2002: xii). Thus youth, despite being a site of crisis, are still seen as subject to and controllable by the pressures of more powerful institutions, such as governing laws. Also, youth and their deviancies, as the products of familial and institutional teachings, are prime case studies for determining “the real, much deeper and more prevalent condition” that plagues a society (Cohen 2002: viii). The search for an underlying greater evil than the panic site itself is, as Cohen notes, a common reaction to any moral panic.
What does moral panic then imply for the analysis of youth cultures in East Asia? While Cohen’s study focuses on cases in Great Britain, his conclusions on moral panic arguably apply just as well to the analyses of various concepts in East Asian youth cultures. From enjo kosai sex work in Taiwan to the rise of suicides rates among Japanese adolescents, these pieces of East Asian youth culture present their own sites of crisis. The key takeaway, then, in analyzing youth culture in the context of moral panics is to understand both how the panic influences academic analysis and how mainstream institutions change and adapt to “threats” from youth culture. From there, one can begin to see the ways in which moral panics then, in a somewhat circular fashion, reshape the environments in which youth cultures develop.
References
Cohen, Stanley. Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of the Mods and Rockers. 3rd ed. London: Routledge, 2002.
Yet why are youth so historically seen as a site of crisis? On one hand, for the sake of preserving traditional values, the moral development of youth is often held at an utmost importance by institutional powers. Youth are commonly seen as the future generation of leaders; the ideals, morals, and knowledge they carry with them ultimately become the societal foundation for years to come. On the other hand, youth themselves represent an ideal object of moral panic, as per Cohen’s analysis. Youth not only tend to embody more radical views than the older generations, but also present “a soft target, easily denounced, with little power and… without even access to the battlefields of cultural politics” (Cohen 2002: xii). Thus youth, despite being a site of crisis, are still seen as subject to and controllable by the pressures of more powerful institutions, such as governing laws. Also, youth and their deviancies, as the products of familial and institutional teachings, are prime case studies for determining “the real, much deeper and more prevalent condition” that plagues a society (Cohen 2002: viii). The search for an underlying greater evil than the panic site itself is, as Cohen notes, a common reaction to any moral panic.
What does moral panic then imply for the analysis of youth cultures in East Asia? While Cohen’s study focuses on cases in Great Britain, his conclusions on moral panic arguably apply just as well to the analyses of various concepts in East Asian youth cultures. From enjo kosai sex work in Taiwan to the rise of suicides rates among Japanese adolescents, these pieces of East Asian youth culture present their own sites of crisis. The key takeaway, then, in analyzing youth culture in the context of moral panics is to understand both how the panic influences academic analysis and how mainstream institutions change and adapt to “threats” from youth culture. From there, one can begin to see the ways in which moral panics then, in a somewhat circular fashion, reshape the environments in which youth cultures develop.
References
Cohen, Stanley. Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of the Mods and Rockers. 3rd ed. London: Routledge, 2002.
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