Rethinking the Problem of Disproportion: Overreaction, Underreaction, and Normativism in Moral Panic Studies

The greatest conceptual challenge that moral panic studies has struggled with over the past half century is the problem of disproportion. Since the field's inception, moral panics have been conceptualized as disproportionately conservative overreactions to ostensibly insignificant problems. It did not take long for critics, many of whom were working in moral panic studies or related fields of inquiry, to point out that disproportion is construed in a normative rather than empirical manner, and to supplement the conventional focus on conservative overreactions by drawing attention to either conservatively conditioned underreactions (missing panics) or socially progressive overreactions that are cultivated on the political left rather than the right (good moral panics). This article explains how the dynamics of disproportionate social reactions are more complicated than conventional moral panic scholars and their critics alike have recognized. By theorizing the nuances involved in disproportionate social reactions, the article develops a provisional framework to encourage theoretical and conceptual investigations into different kinds of moral boundary violations. The focus of analysis is on the problem of disproportion as it appears in moral panic studies, but scholars working with a broader range of realist, materialist, and/or critical perspectives will recognize and identify with the normative challenges posed by the problem of disproportion in their respective areas of inquiry.