Call for papers - Moral Panics in the Covid-19 Pandemic

[Morena Tartari]

Dear Social Media Research group members,

Professor Cirus Rinaldi (University of Palermo), Dr. Marco Scarcelli (University of Padua), and I are soliciting abstracts for an edited volume on Covid-19 (related) moral panics.

The proposal will be submitted for consideration to Routledge's The COVID-19 Pandemic Series as the series editor has already expressed an interest in the volume.

Below you can find the call.

We welcome contributions from moral panic scholars and other scholars interested in this topic. 

The deadline for an abstract is October 31, 2021.

We would be grateful if you help us in circulating the CFP within your networks.

Please, get in touch with us for questions or if further information is needed.

Thank you very much.

Best regards,
Morena Tartari

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Dr. Morena Tartari

Ph.D. in Sociology

Marie Sklodowska-Curie Research Fellow (H2020-MSCA-2019), University of Antwerp (BE)

email: Morena....@uantwerpen.be

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Call for Proposals

MORAL PANICS IN THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

Co-edited by Morena Tartari, Cosimo Marco Scarcelli, and Cirus Rinaldi

Deadline to submit a 500 to 750-word abstract: October 31, 2021

Submit via email to: morena...@gmail.com, cosimomarc...@unipd.it, cirusr...@gmail.com

 

Background

The concept of moral panic emerged thanks to the seminal work of Stanley Cohen and other scholars in the field of radical criminology about five decades ago. Over such decades, the notion of moral panic and its sociological models have known periods of alternating fortune, have been applied in a range of empirical cases and entered the popular and journalistic discourse. Then, in recent years, the notion has received renovated theoretical and empirical attention and has been linked to different theories and approaches like, among others, risk, moral regulation, discourse analysis, figurational sociology, sociology of emotions, social problems sociology. These recent contributions have confirmed that the notion and its models are well suited to analyze crises, changes, and transformations in our contemporary societies. However, academic attention to moral panics related to a specific topic or situation or social category has often consisted of disconnected or isolated contributions, with little or no conversation between scholars.

An opportunity to analyze a social situation of rapid social transformations and the moral panics related to them is constituted by the Covid-19 pandemic. This will allow moral panic scholars to write contributions connected among them by a defined theme and to engage in a conversation about the strengths and weaknesses of the concept using empirical cases related to the same topic.

 

Call for abstracts for an edited volume

With these aims and this theoretical background in mind, we are calling for chapter proposals, which will explore the relevance of the notion of moral panic in analyzing societal reactions related to the Covid-19 pandemic. The pandemic has raised collective reactions toward specific social situations, social categories, and groups, which can be read through the lenses of the moral panic concept and models. Moral panics emerged not only during the first months of the Covid-19 outbreak (e.g., the so-called “runner hunt”) but also later up to now (e.g., the spasmodic media attention toward the emergence of new virus variants or the moral condemnation against the “careless holiday-makers”).

 

How can the concept of moral panic and its models explain these societal reactions? This question will guide our analyses, which will take account of the different social, national, political, economic, organizational, and cultural contexts in which such moral panics emerged.

The book aims to hold in view both theoretical and methodological debates and empirical studies by focusing on pandemic moral panics.

We aim to solicit writing that, analyzing the societal reactions that emerged during the Covid-19 pandemic, could utilize not only classical approaches to moral panic analysis but also more recent trends which consider risk (Critcher 2008), fear (Furedi 2011), anxiety (Hier 2011), moral regulation (Critcher 2009; Hunt 2011), social problems (Best 2011) as analytic categories.

We are seeking contributions with empirical and theoretical rigor and originality from scholars who belong to different fields: sociology, media studies, criminology, cultural studies, journalism studies, politics, and history.

 

Topics may include:

−        Sociological or interdisciplinary analysis of Covid-19 moral panics;

−        Socio-historical and/or comparative analysis of moral panics related to the Covid-19 pandemic and other pandemics;

−        Examination of contemporary moral panics related to the lockdown and/or other preventive measures;

−        Analysis of the role of different organizations in pandemic-related moral panics;

−        Moral panics related to the medical and pharmaceutical industrial complex in pandemic times.

−        Media panics concerning the Covid-19 pandemic

−        Theoretical contributions on moral panics and pandemics

−        Analysis of grassroots panics in pandemic times

−        Groups of interest, groups of pressure, and Covid-19 pandemic’s moral panics

−        Global and local panics in the Covid-19 pandemic and relations with the political-economic assets.

−        Good panics and pandemic social transformation

−        Moral panics concerning gender and sexuality issues in the Covid-19 pandemic.

−        Family, children, Covid-19 and moral panics.

−        ...

 

The proposal will be submitted for consideration to Routledge's The COVID-19 Pandemic Series as the series editor has already expressed an interest in the volume.

 

Timeline

September 1, 2021: Circulate CFP

October 31, 2021: Submission of abstracts (500-750 words) deadline. Email abstracts to morena...@gmail.com, cosimomarc...@unipd.it, cirusr...@gmail.com

November 20, 2021: Decision for acceptance of abstract after editorial review.

November 30, 2021: Submission of edited volume proposal to the publisher for external review.

January 15, 2022: Edits and feedback on the proposal returned to authors

March 30, 2022: Authors submit full chapters to the editors for internal review

April 30, 2022: Editors send comments to the authors for revisions.

May 30, 2022: Authors send revised chapters to the editors.

July 1, 2022: Editors review chapter submissions, revise the full manuscript, send it back to the authors for another round of revisions

July 15, 2022: Authors send revised chapters to the editors.

July 30, 2022: Editors review chapter submissions, revise the full manuscript, send it back to the authors for another round of revisions.

August 15, 2022: Authors send final revised chapters to the editors.

September 1, 2022: The complete final draft of the book goes to the publisher.

Completed manuscript in press: October-November, 2022

 

 

About the editors

Cirus Rinaldi, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Sociology of deviance at the Department of Culture and Society, University of Palermo, where he lectures on genders, sexualities, violence and masculinities, and crime and criminal justice. His main research topics are masculinity and violence, homophobia, deviance theory, and the sociology of sexualities. He is one among the few Italian scholars who has widely researched sociological aspects of sexuality, the sociology of LGBT people, and masculinity in male sex work. He is currently coordinating the activities of the Research group on bodies, rights, and conflict at Palermo University. Among his latest publications are the first Italian academic research on male sex work, Uomini che si fanno pagare. Genere, identità e sessualità nel sex work maschile tra devianza e nuove forme di normalizzazione (DeriveApprodi, Rome, 2020) and the chapter “Sex and Sexuality” (in W. Brekhus, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Symbolic Interaction, forthcoming).

 

Cosimo Marco Scarcelli (Ph.D. in Social Sciences, 2013) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy, Sociology, Education, and Applied Psychology at the University of Padua where he teaches Sociology of Digital Media and Digital Culture and Society. His research interests deal with digital media with a focus on gender, sexuality, intimacy, young people, and media education.

Since 2018, he has chaired the Gender, Sexuality and Communication section of ECREA (European Communication Research and Education Association).

He is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Gender Studies and recently he has been editor of the book ‘Gender and sexuality in the European media’ (Routledge, With Chronaki, De Vuyst and Baselga) and associate editor of The International Encyclopedia of Gender, Media and Communication.

 

Morena Tartari is a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Research Fellow at the University of Antwerp and Researcher Associate at the Centre for Research on Families and Relationships at the University of Edinburgh. She holds a Ph.D. in Sociology (University of Padua, 2012). She taught courses in sociology of communication and cultural processes from 2014 to 2019. Her research lies at the intersections of gender, family, social movements, and organizations. She is the author of many publications on moral panics, family and childhood issues. Former 2020-21 Chair of the Adhoc-Transnational Virtual Initiatives Committee, she is a member of the Transnational Initiatives Committee and Outreach and Membership Committee in SSSP (the Society for the Study of Social Problems). Furthermore, she is a member of the Board of the Working Group on Institutional Ethnography (WG06) in ISA (International Sociological Association) and co-organizer of the Institutional Ethnography Research Stream for the ESA (European Sociological Association. From November 2021, as a research fellow, she will join the Department of Sociology, Social Policy & Criminology (SSPC) of the University of Southampton (UK).