Moral entrepreneur

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Moral entrepreneurs or moral entrepreneurs ( moral entrepreneur ) is a criminological term for people with existing social norms are not satisfied and want to change it. If moral entrepreneurs are successful, corresponding rules of conduct are declared generally binding by law . Anyone who does not behave according to these rules becomes an outsider with deviant behavior , which is then also threatened with punishment. In this respect, moral entrepreneurs not only produce rules, but indirectly also deviations and criminality .

Conceptual history and meaning

Joseph R. Gusfield first used the term "humanitarian crusaders" in 1963 for the activists of the American abstinence movement . In the same year, Howard S. Becker shaped his book Outsiders. Studies in the Sociology of Deviance used the term “moral entrepreneur”, which in German-language crime sociology is mainly translated as “moral entrepreneur” and less often as “moral entrepreneur”. Becker counts rule setters and rule enforcers among these entrepreneurs who are related to each other. Sebastian Scheerer added to the German-speaking discussion about the term atypical moral entrepreneur .

The term moral entrepreneur is predominantly used in the context of critical criminology , which is in the tradition of the labeling approach . It is also used by representatives of social science addiction research in connection with drug panics , but on the other hand it is also applied to themselves, where arguments are made for the lifting of prohibition or in connection with the enforcement of accepting drug work .

Rule setter

The prototype of the rule-maker is, according to Becker, the crusades undertaking reformer who, for example, wants to protect the population from the health and social damage caused by drug use. When such moral entrepreneurs have succeeded as leaders of social movements or as lobbyists and legislative changes are planned, they leave the detailed work to experts as professional rule-setters, such as lawyers and psychiatrists. Such crusades, like the Prohibition movement in the United States, can have resounding success . Often, however, they fail, such as the efforts to ban tobacco consumption or the movement against animal testing. Becker draws the conclusion:

“So only a few crusaders are successful with their mission and establish a new group of outsiders with the establishment of a new rule. Some of the successful crusaders come to the conclusion that they have a crusade inclination and seek new problems. Other crusaders fail in their attempt and either support the organization they set up by giving up their real mission and focus on maintaining the organization itself, or they themselves become outsiders who continue to advocate and preach a doctrine that sounds stranger over time. "

Rule enforcer

After a successful moral crusade and the establishment of new rules, new authorities and officials are often entrusted with the task of enforcing these rules. This institutionalizes the crusade, creating not only a new group of outsiders but also one of rule enforcers. Becker concludes:

“What began with an effort to convince the world of the moral necessity of a rule is becoming an organization dedicated to enforcing that rule. Just as radical political movements transform into organized political parties and zealous religious sects become serene religious denominations, so the end result of a moral crusade is a police force. "

Professional enforcers, such as police officers, face a double difficulty, according to Becker. On the one hand, they have to justify the sense of what they are doing by stating that there are breaches of rules. On the other hand, there must not be too many rule violations to prove that rule enforcement works. If it is not possible to solve this double problem, the original rule-setters reappear and declare that "the result of the last crusade was not satisfactory or that what was once won was melted away and lost."

Atypical moral entrepreneurs

Sebastian Scheerer describes members of social movements as atypical moral entrepreneurs who had their roots in the anti-authoritarian 1968 movement and saw themselves as anti-institutional and grassroots democracy. These groups, which were originally very critical of state regulation and conservative moral crusades, now called for stricter environmental laws, changes to the penal code against rape in marriage and against the criminality of the powerful . Frank Neubacher describes the classification of "atypical moral entrepreneurs" as a disqualification of former socio-political allies of critical criminology, behind which there is the disappointment that groups who were fundamentally committed to a criminal law-skeptical position now partially rely on criminalization .

literature

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Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Joseph R. Gusfield: Symbolic Crusade. Status Politics and the American Temperance Movement. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1963.
  2. ^ Howard S. Becker: Outsiders. On the sociology of deviant behavior , 2nd edition, Wiesbaden 2014, p. 145.
  3. ↑ Sebastian Scheerer: Atypical moral entrepreneurs , in: Criminology Journal , 1986, First Supplement: S. 133-156.
  4. ↑ Craig Reinarman: The social construction of drug panics , in: Bernd Dollinger, Henning Schmidt-Semisch (Hrsg.): Sozialwissenschaftliche Suchtforschung , Wiesbaden: Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2007, pp. 97–111, here p. 104.
  5. ↑ Michael Schabdach: Social constructions of drug use and social work. Historical dimensions and current developments, VS-Verlag, Wiesbaden 2009, ISBN 978-3-531-16752-7 , pp. 141 ff. (Section: Critical drug research as moral entrepreneurs )
  6. ^ Howard S. Becker: Outsiders. On the sociology of deviant behavior , 2nd edition, Wiesbaden 2014, pp. 145 ff.
  7. ^ Howard S. Becker: Outsiders. On the sociology of deviant behavior , 2nd edition, Wiesbaden 2014, p. 151.
  8. ^ Howard S. Becker: Outsiders. On the sociology of deviant behavior , 2nd edition, Wiesbaden 2014, p. 151.
  9. ^ Howard S. Becker: Outsiders. On the sociology of deviant behavior , 2nd edition, Wiesbaden 2014, p. 152.
  10. ^ Howard S. Becker: Outsiders. On the sociology of deviant behavior , 2nd edition, Wiesbaden 2014, p. 156.
  11. ↑ Sebastian Scheerer: Atypical moral entrepreneurs . Kriminologisches Journal , 1986, First Supplement: pp. 133–156.
  12. ^ Frank Neubacher: Criminological foundations of an international criminal justice system. Political history of ideas and dogmas, criminal science legitimation, criminal law perspectives , Tübingen 2005, p. 186.