E-Book Overview
Child pornography and sexual grooming provide case study exemplars of problems that society and law have sought to tackle to avoid both actual and potential harm to children. Yet despite the considerable legal, political and societal concern that these critical phenomena attract, they have not, thus far, been subjected to detailed socio-legal and theoretical scrutiny. How do society and law construct the harms of child pornography and grooming? What impact do constructions of the child have upon legal and societal responses to these phenomena? What has been the impetus behind the expanding criminalisation of behaviour in these areas? Suzanne Ost addresses these and other important questions, exploring the critical tensions within legal and social discourses which must be tackled to discourage moral panic reactions towards child pornography and grooming, and advocating a new, more rational approach towards combating these forms of exploitation.
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Child Pornography and Sexual Grooming Child pornography and sexual grooming provide case study exemplars of problems that society and law have sought to tackle to avoid both actual and potential harm to children. Yet despite the considerable legal, political and societal concern that these critical phenomena attract, they have not, thus far, been subjected to detailed socio-legal and theoretical scrutiny. How do society and law construct the harms of child pornography and grooming? What impact do constructions of the child have upon legal and societal responses to these phenomena? What has been the impetus behind the expanding criminalization of behaviour in these areas? Suzanne Ost addresses these and other important questions, exploring the critical tensions within legal and social discourses which must be tackled to discourage moral panic reactions towards child pornography and grooming, and advocating a new, more rational approach toward combating these forms of exploitation. suzanne ost is a Senior Lecturer in Law at Lancaster University. She is also assistant editor for the Medical Law Review journal and a member of both the Society of Legal Scholars and the Socio-Legal Studies Association.
Cambridge Studies in Law and Society Cambridge Studies in Law and Society aims to publish the best scholarly work on legal discourse and practice in its social and institutional contexts, combining theoretical insights and empirical research. The fields that it covers are: studies of law in action; the sociology of law; the anthropology of law; cultural studies of law, including the role of legal discourses in social formations; law and economics; law and politics; and studies of governance. The books consider all forms of legal discourse across societies, rather than being limited to lawyers’ discourses alone. The series editors come from a range of disciplines: academic law; socio-legal studies; sociology; and anthropology. All have been actively involved in teaching and writing about law in context. Series Editors Chris Arup Monash University, Victoria Martin Chanock La Trobe University, Melbourne Sally Engle Merry New York University Pat O’Malley University of Sydney Susan Silbey Massachusetts Institute of Technology Books in the Series The Politics of Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa Legitimizing the Post-Apartheid State Richard A. Wilson Modernism and the Grounds of Law Peter Fitzpatrick Unemployment and Government Genealogies of the Social William Walters Autonomy and Ethnicity Negotiating Competing Claims in Multi-Ethnic States Yash Ghai Constituting Democracy Law, Globalism and South Africa’s Political Reconstruction Heinz Klug The Ritual of Rights in Japan Law, Society, and Health Policy Eric A. Feldman The Invention of the Passport Surveillance, Citizenship and the State John Torpey Governing Morals A Social Histo