reading questions

Description

This class session has inadvertently come to be as much about past child sex abuse panics as the contemporary panic about child sex trafficking with an even bigger political impact than the past panics as this story demonstrates

The assigned readings for this session do three different things. Young (2008) focuses on the day care ritual abuse scare in the same period in relation to moral panic models, Beck (2015) explains the social, intellectual and political background for child abuse panics during the 1980s, and Irvine (2006) explores the emotional dimensions of sex panics .

Please write a short essay answering the following questions:

Question 1

What are the master symbols that stand for deeper and more complex social anxieties, according to Young (2008)?

And what kind of moral entrepreneurs, experts and agents of social control did these master symbols provide access to the public debate?

Question 2

Beck (2015) argues that the day care trials were a powerful instrument of the conservative backlash. What was the backlash about?

What is the role of psychological theories in child abuse panics according to Beck?

Question 3

Irvine (2006) does not think moral panics are irrational eruptions of outrage but reactions to deliberate provocations by right wing forces. What does she mean by emotional scripts of sex panics? How do they mobilize public reactions in certain directions?

Question 4

And lastly, what are the similarities between the earlier child abuse panics and today’s child trafficking panic provoked by QAnon and his followers? What kind of deeper social and political anxieties do the current panics point to? Draw on Breland:

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/07/why-are-right-wing-conspiracies-so-obsessed-with-pedophilia/Links to an external site. It is super important that the questions are answered through the lens of the readings and everything is only from the readings. There’s 4 readings in total.