THEORISING THE REGULATION OF YOUTH CULTURE. FROM MORAL PANIC TO MORAL REGULATION?

Marja Andersson

Hannu Ruonavaara

Department of Sociology

20014 University of Turku

FINLAND

Abstract

Turku International Rock Festival has been arranged since 1970 in the pittoresque and ecologically unique island of Ruissalo, just a few kilometers from the centre of the city of Turku. Especially in the early years the festival aroused moral outrage in the media and city council. This paper reflects on how this could be interpreted and explained theoretically. An obvious candidate for interpretation is moral panic theory, originally developed in the early 1970s and still enjoying some popularity in scholarly publications and also in the media. It describes situations where the media and the general public express exaggerated moral outrage over some phenomenon. The theory is, however, riddled with some well-known problems, especially the presumption that the moral reaction is by definition exaggerated and unfounded. None of the attempts to remedy the theory are successful in eliminating this problem. The presumption of disproportionality is avoided if another perspective is adopted, namely that of moral regulation. This perspective has several advantages compared to the perspective of moral panic. It does not evaluate campaigns of moral regulation normatively. It is also a dynamic approach which takes into account the complexity of processes of regulation, the roles of various agents of regulation as well as those opposing it, different strategies of regulation etc. However, the explanatory/interpretative power of moral regulation theory in its present state of development can be scrutinised. It can be argued that it is good in providing tools for historically sensitive and theoretically organised descriptions of what is going on in moral campaigns but less good in providing propositions about why such campaigns emerge. Further work on the “mechanisms” of moral regulation is obviously needed.