'Richly documented and convincingly presented' -- New Society Mods and Rockers, skinheads, video nasties, designer drugs, bogus asylum seeks and hoodies. Every era has its own moral panics. It was Stanley Cohen's classic account, first published in the early 1970s and regularly revised, that brought[...]

This volume offers a comprehensive study of both the personal and political ways in which uncomfortable realities are avoided and evaded. It ranges from clinical states of depression, to media images of suffering, to explanations of the "passive bystander".[...]