moral crusade

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moral crusade A social movement which campaigns around a symbolic or moral issue such as alcohol or pornography. Classic sociological accounts of moral crusades include Joseph R. Gusfield's study of the Temperance Movement, Symbolic Crusade (1963), and Louis A. Zurcher et al. , Citizens for Decency (1976)
. The term is part of the wider theory of moral enterprise introduced in Howard Becker's Outsiders. See also MORAL PANIC.

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