News Release - Binge-drinking: a recurring moral panic, says new History & Policy paper10 September 2007
Binge-drinking, anarchy on the streets, parental neglect and a government in denial. The Conservative party’s indictment of Britain’s ‘broken society’ would have been familiar to William Hogarth as he engraved ‘Gin Lane’, his own vivid indictment of mid-18th century London, argues historian Professor Peter Borsay of Aberystwyth University, in a new History & Policy paper published today.
In Binge drinking and moral panics: historical parallels? Professor Borsay explores the parallels between the early-18th century Gin Craze and contemporary binge-drinking culture. He argues that direct comparisons between drinking behaviour then and now have been overdrawn, but highlights how media-constructed moral panics have characterised both episodes and come to symbolise wider anxieties about social breakdown.
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