Stanley Cohen (sociologist)

Lore & Background

Cohen was born in Johannesburg, South Africa in 1942, the son of a Lithuanian businessman. He grew up as a Zionist and intended to settle in Israel. He studied Sociology and Social Work as an undergraduate at the University of Witwatersrand, becoming involved in anti-apartheid issues. In 1963 he moved to London, working as a social worker before completing his PhD at the London School of Economics on social reactions to juvenile delinquency, studying the Mods and Rockers youth riots through press reactions and direct interviews. From 1967 he lectured at Enfield College and then Durham University, where he was influenced by the anti-psychiatry movement and participated in the National Deviancy Conference. A project in Durham prison with Laurie Taylor led to several books, including Psychological Survival: The Experience of Long-term Imprisonment (1972) and Escape Attempts (1976).

From 1972 to 1980 he was Professor of Sociology at the University of Essex. In 1980 he moved with his family to Israel, becoming Director of the Institute of Criminology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he worked with human rights organisations campaigning against torture and dealing with the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. He returned to England in 1996 after being diagnosed with Parkinson's disease and was appointed Martin White Professor of Sociology at LSE, retiring in 2005. He was elected a fellow of the British Academy in 1998 and received honorary doctorates from the University of Essex and Middlesex University. He died on 7 January 2013 from consequences of Parkinson's disease.

Reader's Guide

Cohen's 1972 study Folk Devils and Moral Panics is widely regarded by British criminologists as one of the most influential works in the field in the last forty years. It applied the concepts of labelling, societal reaction, and the Deviancy Amplification Spiral, shifting criminology's focus from causes of crime toward social reaction and social control. Cohen suggested that media overreaction to behaviour challenging social norms helps define and communicate that behaviour, potentially fueling further unacceptable conduct. His later book States of Denial: Knowing about Atrocities and Suffering (2001) analyzed personal and political ways humans avoid uncomfortable realities such as poverty, suffering, and injustice. The Guardian wrote that Cohen leads the reader to conclude that denial is 'normal' and that seeing truth and acting accordingly is rare. Michael Ignatieff said the book would become the starting point for all future debate on the subject. Cohen's work remains central to understanding how societies react to deviance and how individuals and governments manage—or mismanage—emotional responses to suffering.

Did You Know?

• Cohen grew up as a Zionist and intended to settle in Israel.
• He founded the Centre for the Study of Human Rights at the London School of Economics.
• His PhD thesis was titled 'Hooligans, vandals and the community: a study of social reaction to juvenile delinquency'.
• The term 'moral panic' was used as early as 1830 in the Quarterly Christian Spectator and by Marshall McLuhan in 1964, before Cohen's work.