Music, youth and moral panics in France, 1960 to the present

Abstract: French society since 1945 has been characterised by a generally negative social discourse on youth, frequently precipitated by specific anxieties that relate to the emergence of apparently new groups onto the social scene. This article undertakes a comparative study of two such moments, when moral panics and an accompanying discourse of control developed in relation to the apparence of new forms of popular music in France: rock’n’roll in the early 1960s, and techno in the mid-1990s. On the basis of this comparison, it draws some conclusions about the relationship between regulatory authority and the ordinary citizen in France, and about the evolving role of the state.