What Is Stanley Cohen's Approach To Explaining Social Disorder
This essay will compare and contrast the approaches taken by Stanley Cohen (1973) and Stuart Hall et al. (1978) to explaining social disorder by firstly discussing what is meant by social disorder, who it applies to and the affect that it has on society. It will then look at the views of Stuart Hall et al. and their arguments surrounding the involvement of the media in social disorder, and it’s affects on society, whilst comparing them with those of Stuart Cohen before finally outlining any similarities and differences in their approaches and views.
Orderly behaviour or social order is a code of conduct that refers to social practices and structures that help maintain normal ways of living. Anything outside of this structure is seen as disorder …show more content…
demonstrate how the effects of antisocial events reported in the media shape the attitudes and behaviours of the general public. The media played a very big part in the studies of both Stanley Cohen and Stuart Hall et Al. They both drew upon the same conclusion that mediation influenced the ways in which the public reacted to antisocial behaviour. Stanley Cohen developed the idea of Folk Devils back in the 1960's when he studied the fights between the "Mods and Rockers" and the following media coverage and public outrage. Coming from South Africa he was struck by the media’s adaptation of the events, he was not use to the British headlines and confirms that the difference between the actual event and the media coverage was dramatic for him. 'It was from that that I developed the complicated parts of the theories. But, to be fair, it wasn’t just the discrepancy I stumbled on, I came, in a sense, looking for it, because much of the theory and ideas around at the time of, what was called labelling theory, worked on the idea that there simply was a difference between the thing, the object, and the way people reacted to it. And secondly, those discrepancies have some kind of pattern, they’re not just random.' (The making of order and disorder, 2009, …show more content…
The Policing the Crisis (1978) of Stuart Hall et al. akin to Cohen, agreed that the media’s orchestration of antisocial behaviour creating a moral panic which he termed ‘A Sense of Crisis’. However, society then evolved to a ‘Law and Order society’ as the social factors in Hall et al. theory were inequality, social crisis and the interest of the state in diverting the attention away from these factors unlike Cohen where the social factors was a 'deep-seated culture of anxiety'
One similarity between the two theories is that they both investigate the structure of specific forms of anti-social behaviours. They also both recognised the existence of street violence and they were both concerned about how it became described and represented by the media, amplified or defined. In both investigations there is a particular attention on how the media influence the public view of events and how public perceive
Orderly behaviour or social order is a code of conduct that refers to social practices and structures that help maintain normal ways of living. Anything outside of this structure is seen as disorder …show more content…
demonstrate how the effects of antisocial events reported in the media shape the attitudes and behaviours of the general public. The media played a very big part in the studies of both Stanley Cohen and Stuart Hall et Al. They both drew upon the same conclusion that mediation influenced the ways in which the public reacted to antisocial behaviour. Stanley Cohen developed the idea of Folk Devils back in the 1960's when he studied the fights between the "Mods and Rockers" and the following media coverage and public outrage. Coming from South Africa he was struck by the media’s adaptation of the events, he was not use to the British headlines and confirms that the difference between the actual event and the media coverage was dramatic for him. 'It was from that that I developed the complicated parts of the theories. But, to be fair, it wasn’t just the discrepancy I stumbled on, I came, in a sense, looking for it, because much of the theory and ideas around at the time of, what was called labelling theory, worked on the idea that there simply was a difference between the thing, the object, and the way people reacted to it. And secondly, those discrepancies have some kind of pattern, they’re not just random.' (The making of order and disorder, 2009, …show more content…
The Policing the Crisis (1978) of Stuart Hall et al. akin to Cohen, agreed that the media’s orchestration of antisocial behaviour creating a moral panic which he termed ‘A Sense of Crisis’. However, society then evolved to a ‘Law and Order society’ as the social factors in Hall et al. theory were inequality, social crisis and the interest of the state in diverting the attention away from these factors unlike Cohen where the social factors was a 'deep-seated culture of anxiety'
One similarity between the two theories is that they both investigate the structure of specific forms of anti-social behaviours. They also both recognised the existence of street violence and they were both concerned about how it became described and represented by the media, amplified or defined. In both investigations there is a particular attention on how the media influence the public view of events and how public perceive