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Social work, class politics and risk in the moral panic over Baby P

Warner, Joanne (2013) Social work, class politics and risk in the moral panic over Baby P. Health, Risk & Society, 15 (3). pp. 217-233. ISSN 1369-8575. (doi:10.1080/13698575.2013.776018) (The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided) (KAR id:37090)

The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided.
Official URL:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13698575.2013.776018

Abstract

The hostile reaction to social workers following the conviction of the killers of Baby P in November 2008 was unprecedented even by the standards of previous high-profile child abuse deaths, such as Maria Colwell and Victoria Climbie. Media coverage, particularly in the press, was extensive. Reaction to the case has precipitated major reforms across social work at all levels. In this article, I argue that these events need to be understood through critical analysis of the political, ideological and symbolic dimensions of the reaction to Baby P's death. I show that recent developments in critical moral panic theory are useful in providing the basis for such an analysis-particularly the idea of moral panic as 'an extreme risk discourse' linked to processes of moral regulation, and as an extreme form of othering. I draw on research involving the qualitative document analysis of press reports about Baby P that were published during the first week of media coverage in November 2008, following the criminal conviction of his killers and the lifting of reporting restrictions. I show how the reaction to the brutality of Baby P's death also reflected deep anxieties about 'new' class formations in contemporary Britain, specifically the behaviours of an imagined dangerous, contaminating underclass, and involved the assertion of middle-class identities. In its complex and contradictory constructions of social workers in the case as 'folk devils', the moral panic over Baby P revisits profound, unresolved moral disturbance about social work's necessary propinquity to the underclass and its capacity for moral regulation and social control.

Item Type: Article
DOI/Identification number: 10.1080/13698575.2013.776018
Uncontrolled keywords: child protection, documentary analysis, media, moral regulation, parenting, risk, social work, underclass, article, bibliographic database, child abuse, child death, child neglect, child parent relation, child welfare, civil disorder, dysfunctional family, ethical decision making, human, lifestyle, mass medium, morality, publication, sexual promiscuity, social class, social control, social work, social work practice
Subjects: H Social Sciences
Divisions: Divisions > Division for the Study of Law, Society and Social Justice > School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research
Depositing User: Jo Warner
Date Deposited: 02 Dec 2013 13:28 UTC
Last Modified: 16 Nov 2021 10:13 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/37090 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

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