Chas Critcher

‘still raving’: social reaction to Ecstasy

In the late 1980s and early 1990s there emerged in the UK a new youth cultural phenomenon, the rave. Subsequently transformed into clubbing, it is now a significant part of the leisure activities of young people well into their 20s. Reconstructing its history reveals the development of rave culture through the confluence of innovations in music, drugs and dance and the largely negative social reaction from media, police and government. Three perspectives are evaluated for their utility in analysing these processes: the moral panics framework, theories of risk and ethnographies of clubbing. Each has a contribution to make but they also indicate some substantive unresolved issues, all relevant to leisure studies. There is a need for a revised sociology of youth, case study material on moral regulation and greater sustained attention to music, dance and drugs as central to the formation of contemporary youth cultures in leisure.

For a political economy of moral panics

A case is made for a political economy of moral panics and moral regulation. After a brief discussion of the political economy of alcohol regulation, the focus shifts to the culture-of-fear thesis. Four writers (Glassner, Altheide, Furedi and Bauman) are interrogated for what they have to say about the culture of fear. Examined are its definition and manifestations; its historical genesis; its key agents and their motivations; how the culture of fear is constructed and disseminated; and its implications for governmental action and public attitudes. Six propositions are identified as constituting a consensus about the political economy of the culture of fear: (1) a safer society produces paradoxically more fear; (2) this fear is different from previous types of fear; (3) fear is symbolically constructed; (4) the media and popular culture are vital to sustaining fear; (5) fear distorts and misrecognizes social realities; (6) fear generates hostility to outsiders. Such a perspective revisits the original project of radical criminology. It is argued that moral panics and moral regulation analysis should be informed by the adherence of political economy to the importance of historical change, seeing society as a totality, insisting on morality as a focus and position, and through a sustained commitment to praxis.

Is there anything on the box? Leisure studies and media studies

This article reviews the contemporary state of British media studies, concentrating on those areas where links may be forged with leisure studies. The separate development of media studies and leisure studies is initially noted. Discussion is organized under five headings: ownership and control, form and content, the audience, theories and new technology. Each contains a summary of questions and areas of concern common to media and leisure studies. The conclusion argues the need for more middle-range concepts to develop specific links between media and leisure studies.

New perspectives on anti-doping policy: from moral panic to moral regulation

Understandings of anti-doping policy in sport may benefit from utilizing the perspectives of moral panic and moral regulation. The work of Stan Cohen outlined a model of moral panic, which has since been extended and refined. Its tenets are outlined and then illustrated by a case study of the ‘designer drug’ mephedrone, which emerged in 2010. More recent ideas about moral regulation are reviewed, with emphasis on how they help contextualize moral panics in a wide process with identifiable characteristics. As a case study, the issue of recreational drugs in general demonstrates the dynamics behind projects of moral regulation. Both perspectives are evaluated and a series of propositions are derived from them to apply to anti-doping policy. The interpretations in two authoritative accounts by Houlihan and Moller indicate a high degree of compatibility with the frameworks of moral regulation and moral panic, which may thus aid future analysis of anti-doping policy.

Divided we play: leisure and social divisions

no mode of production and therefore no dominant social order and therefore no dominant culture ever in reality includes or exhausts all humnan practice, human energy and human intention. (Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature, Oxford University Press, 1977, p. 125.)

We sell everything — the mixed economy of leisure

There’s a great industry in other people’s pleasure. (Margaret Thatcher, interviewed in The Director, August 1983.) Maggie’s Mickie Mouse jobs plans. Daily Mirror headline accompanying report of the same interview (26 August 1983).

Passing the time away: the historical development of leisure

The demand for amusement is not less noticeable than that for holidays, and supply follows. To ‘what shall we eat, what drink, and wherewithal shall we be clothed?’ must now be added the question ‘How shall we be amused?’ To this an answer has to be found. Even to the police it is a problem. (Charles Booth, in A. Fried and R. Elman (eds). Charles Booth’s London, Penguin, 1971, p. 258.)

Breaking the mould: a brief encounter with the sociology of leisure

For though abstract discussions about theoretical premises have a limited value, it matters very much, in history as in other social sciences, what starting points are chosen. (Richard Johnson, ‘Culture and the Historians’, in J. Clarke, C. Critcher and R. Johnson (eds), Working Class Culture, Hutchinson. 1979, p. 41.)

Future imperfect: leisure and the post-industrial society

A new type of society is now being formed. (Opening sentence of Alain Touraine, The Post-Industrial Society, Wildwood House, 1974, p. 4.) When the post-industrial thesis is broken down into specific assertions, examination dissolves it into the familiar story of plus ca change, plus cest la meme chose; or, the same, only more so. (Krishnan Kumar, Prophecy and Progress, Penguin, 1978, p. 237.)