Tag: cultural politics
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Against moral panic (for cultural politics)
Pundits, sociologists, and activists frequently use the term “moral panic” to describe what they perceive as a public overreaction to an issue (or non-issue). Examples include “Prostitution and Human Trafficking – The Anatomy of a Moral Panic,” “What’s Flakka and is it Real? A Guide to the New Moral Panic Drugs,” From Miasma to Ebola: […]
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Chapter: Sociologies of (in)security
This chapter was written with Lisa Stampnitzky for the edited volume by Philippe Bourbeau. Preprint available here. “In contrast to other disciplines, “security” has not traditionally been a central focus of sociological research. This is not to say that sociologists have not studied problems, sites, interactions, and discourses that are relevant to what has elsewhere […]
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Book: How prostitution presaged the failure of Europe
My book The Cultural Politics of European Prostitution Reform: Governing Loose Women was published by Palgrave in 2016. Is the European Project Falling Apart? asks one of several headlines as the European refugee crisis moves into chronic mode. Where the Greek debt crisis exposed the problems of the Eurozone currency union, the refugee crisis shows how […]
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The Traffic in Deer
Deer trafficking: another example of the spread of what I call trafficking talk, or the traffic in trafficking. Recent headlines include Two Florida Men Sentenced for Trafficking in Deer or Deer-Trafficking Scheme Nets Record $1.6 Million Fine Up until around 2010, news outlets usually called such crimes “smuggling,””poaching,” “illegal sales” or “illegal transport” (the earliest […]
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The Key to Political Persuasion – The New York Times
A great news article by my former colleague Robb Willer succinctly explains why cultural politics are so durable and contentious: our fundamental moral frames are so encompassing its almost impossible to see another’s point of view. Via The New York Times.
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Prostitution Reform as a Symptom of EU Integration Anxieties
Here’s video from talk I gave in May at the series “Conversations on Europe” at the Center for European Studies of the University of Michigan.
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Book review of The State of Sex by Brents, Jackson & Hausbeck
A Review of: “The State of Sex: Tourism, Sex and Sin in the New American Heartland. By Barbara G. Brents, Crystal A. Jackson, and Kathryn Hausbeck” New York, NY: Routledge, 2009, 320 pages. Paperback, $28.76. Archives of Sexual Behavior. 2011.
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Article: Is America fragmenting?
Published in the Annual Review of Sociology in 2009, it was cited in The New York Times in 2010. “The view that America is fragmenting is popular among both pundits and academics and may well be endemic to American culture. We review claims that between 1970 and 2005 American society fragmented along lines of cultural […]
Greggor Mattson, PhD 