On Scandal

Scandal is the quintessential public event. Here is the first general and comprehensive analysis of this ubiquitous moral phenomenon. Taking up wide-ranging cases in society, politics, and art, Ari Adut shows when wrongdoings generate scandals and when they do not. He focuses on the emotional and cognitive experience of scandals and the relationships among those who are involved in or exposed to them. This perspective explains variations in the effects, frequency, elicited reactions, outcomes, and strategic uses of scandals. On Scandal offers provocative accounts of the Oscar Wilde, Watergate, and Lewinsky affairs. Adut also employs the lens of scandal to address puzzles and questions regarding public life. Why is American politics plagued by sex scandals? What is the cause of the rise in political scandals in Western democracies? Why were Victorians sometimes very accommodating and other times very intolerant of homosexuality? What is the social logic of hypocrisy? Why has transgression been so central to modern art?

Author: Ari Adut
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 08/01/2009
Pages: 356
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.05lbs
Size: 8.60h x 5.70w x 0.90d
ISBN: 9780521720403

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 07/07/2008

About the Author
Adut, Ari: - Ari Adut is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin. He holds postgraduate degrees from École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris and the University of Chicago, where he has also taught. His research has received support from the Social Science Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies.