Touch, Fear, and Child Protection: Immoral Panic and Immoral Crusade

Piper, Heather

doi:10.2304/power.2014.6.3.229

Cited by 17 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…This study joins a small group of studies from the United Kingdom [4,16,[29][30][31] and the United States [6,9,32,33] that indicated that guidelines for protecting children from CSA and staff from wrongful allegations are pervasive at British and American preschool institutions. These studies 1 The study is called The Guideline Study 2012, in Danish, Retningslinjeundersøgelsen 2012.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 91%

Guidelines for Preventing Child Sexual Abuse and Wrongful Allegations against Staff at Danish Childcare Facilities

2019

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Since the 1980s, the fear of child sexual abuse (CSA) has become a major cultural feature of a large part of the Western world. Internationally, the unintended consequences of the fear surrounding CSA are rarely investigated and doing so is often controversial. The purpose of this study was to investigate how this widespread fear of CSA has influenced practices and teacher–child relationships at childcare institutions. This is the first study of Danish childcare facilities’ guidelines for protecting children against CSA, and staff against wrongful allegations of CSA. Examples of such guidelines include staff being forbidden to have children sit on their lap, or male staff being forbidden to change diapers. This mixed methods survey, which involved the participation of 2051 directors and teachers from approximately one-quarter of Danish childcare facilities, showed that the majority of institutions had guidelines that were aimed mostly at protecting staff from wrongful allegations. The study revealed that the guidelines were a sign that male workers were being stigmatized, and that some institutions had discriminatory guidelines that applied exclusively to men. Furthermore, the guidelines conflicted with staff’s trusting relationships with children, and the task of caring for them.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 91%

Guidelines for Preventing Child Sexual Abuse and Wrongful Allegations against Staff at Danish Childcare Facilities

2019

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“…There is a need to work on this bodily closeness, particularly in today's society, where social and mass media do not promote ideal personal development. (Christopher, male, week 2) 3 Students from Spanish-speaking countries often use the term 'profe' to refer to teachers at all levels (i.e., primary, secondary and tertiary) in an affectionate way. The term comes from 'profesor' but it does not refer to the 'professor' title used within Anglophone academia.…”

Section: Acknowledging Emotions and Feelingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Within Physical Education (PE), physical contact is often considered 'normal' or embedded in the profession [1][2][3]. PE teachers utilise different techniques that involve bodily touch connected to specific traditional purposes such as guidance, encouragement and safety [2,[4][5][6].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Western societies have evidenced increased levels of anxiety in relation to the abuse and protection of children in recent years 1 [7] and research has proposed that PE and sport pedagogy have been weakened by the lack of touch [3,8]. Young children, who often consider teachers to be 'parent substitutes', may want to show affection towards their teachers and try to hold their hands, sit on their laps, or hug and kiss them.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Exploring Touch in Physical Education Practicum in a Touchy Latin Culture

2018

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Abstract:The decrease in touch has been explored in recent literature in relation to child protection discourses and no touch policies and it has been suggested that Physical Education (PE) has been weakened by the lack of touch. Significantly, the issue of touch has remained largely unexplored in Latin societies, which are characterised by an amplified tactile approach to people and comparatively little personal space. This paper examines how a group of pre-service PE teachers in Spain responded to, acted and negotiated touch with primary school students. It draws on data generated from body journals and the concepts of risk society, surveillance and moral panic. The findings indicate that touching school students is still common practice in Spain and was considered something positive. The influence of other individuals and certain spaces was also noted by participants, who felt more surveilled and distressed on particular occasions and some of them strategically introduced touch with students in a progressive manner. The results of the study invite us to reflect on the possibility of doing more harm than good by presenting topics about touch to pre-service teachers and how pre-service teacher educators may need to provide PE students with proper resources and understandings to successfully negotiate touch with school students.

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“…We argued that the wide, pervasive and moral crusader-led discourse of safeguarding and child protection has created a 'folk devil' and moral panic (Cohen, 1999;Piper, 2014), escalating fear among coaches and radically disturbing the role of the coach through the adoption of questionable defensive and self-protective practices (Taylor et al 2014). This has corollary implications and often deleterious consequences for the development of 2 sound intergenerational relationships between coach and athlete in youth sport and physical education, alongside collateral negative effects in adult sport.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Too hot to handle? A social semiotic analysis of touching in “Bend it like Beckham”

Garratt

Piper

2016

Sports Coaching Review

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This article examines the cinematic portrayal of touching and its politics in sports coaching, exploring how social interactions between coach and athlete are symbolically represented. The analysis focuses primarily on a well-known British-produced film, Bend it like Beckham (2002), in which scenes exhibit different forms of touching. The construction of intimate coach-athlete relationships captured through a series of filmed encounters is analysed through a social semiotic frame. This requires judgements about the authority, 'reality-status', and possibility of meaning arising from such representational practices. Attention is drawn to different moments of intimacy and/or sexual tension between the lead coach and central female characters, both on and off the pitch. Through a series of detailed interpretations, we show how the complexities involved in assigning intentionality in cinematic contexts serves both to assert and displace meaning. This further problematizes moral aspects of relations between coaches and athletes in tactile encounters, and especially so within the context of risk-averse safeguarding policies in sports coaching, a context characterised by increased prescription, proscription and disciplinary intervention during the years since the film was released.

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Touch, Fear, and Child Protection: Immoral Panic and Immoral Crusade

Cited by 17 publications

References 21 publications

Guidelines for Preventing Child Sexual Abuse and Wrongful Allegations against Staff at Danish Childcare Facilities

Guidelines for Preventing Child Sexual Abuse and Wrongful Allegations against Staff at Danish Childcare Facilities

Exploring Touch in Physical Education Practicum in a Touchy Latin Culture

Too hot to handle? A social semiotic analysis of touching in “Bend it like Beckham”

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