Historical Case Study

Stanley Cohen's study was primarily about the Mods and Rockers of the 1960's but his initial ideas relate to moral panics and deviant amplification. A moral panic is the intensity of feeling expressed in a population about an issue that appears to threaten the social order, a contemporary example of this is "chavs". Chavs are stereotyped in this way because they wear tracksuit bottoms, hoodies, and be seen to be drinking illegally on the streets and in parks causing trouble.