Social Control - Abstracts

Sociology Index, Sociology Books 2012, Abstracts, Bibliography, Syllabus, Journals, Books on Social Control

Ironies of Social Control: Authorities as Contributors to Deviance Through Escalation, Nonenforcement and Covert Facilitation - Gary T. Marx, MIT. web.mit.edu/gtmarx/www/ironies.html
ABSTRACT: Current theoretical approaches to the study of deviance and social control tend to neglect a crucial level of analysis: the specific situation within which rule breaking occurs. I analyze the nature and sources of three types of interdependence between rule enforcers.and rule breakers: escalation, nonenforcement and covert facilitation. Each involves the possibility of deviance amplification and illustrates—from the labeling perspective but at a level not previously considered—the ironic insight that authorities often contribute to the deviance they set out to control. I also consider current trends and the implications of this perspective for future theory and research, arguing that social control must be seen as a cause of primary as well as secondary deviance.

“The Invisibilities of Social Control: Uncovering Gary Marx’s
Discovery of Undercover.” Crime, Law and Social Change 18(1/2):177-192. - Deflem, Mathieu. 1992. mathieudeflem.net

Over the last five to ten years, research on undercover policing has received increasing attention in sociology and criminology. Of considerable influence in this regard has been the work of Gary Marx. Especially since the publication of his acclaimed book, Undercover: Police Surveillance in America (1988a), the debate on undercover law enforcement and other related forms of social control has come to the foreground of discussion.

In this paper I wish to discuss Gary Marx’s analysis of covert policing from the perspective of the sociology of social control. I will first show how Marx, from his initial research on collective behavior and social movements, started to focus on undercover work as an exceptional police strategy. Next, I want to demonstrate that undercover law enforcement in Marx’s work is essentially related to other important trends in social control, and that undercover policing should be understood as only one manifestation in a new wave of covert social control strategies.

“Social Control and the Theory of Communicative Action.”
International Journal of the Sociology of Law 22(4):355-373. -Deflem, Mathieu. 1994. mathieudeflem.net
Abstract: This papers develops a perspective of social control on the basis of Jürgen Habermas' theory of communicative action. Previous attempts to apply Habermas' theory to the study of criminal justice and social control have mostly misunderstood or neglected crucial elements of his theoretical project. In discussion with these former applications, and in comparison with the Foucauldian inspired revisionist theories of social control, this paper advances the idea that social control should be conceived in the duality between lifeworld and system, involving state and private agents of control, that are directed at interventions in a plurality of lifeworlds, either on the basis of systems imperatives or in response to lifeworld demands.

Technology and Social Control: The Search for the Illusive Silver Bullet
In the International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2001
Gary T. Marx, Professor Emeritus, MIT - web.mit.edu/gtmarx/www/techandsocial.html
Abstract: One aspect of modernization is the use of science-based technology in rule enforcement. In the “engineered society” an ethos of rationalization is seen in the application of means to ends, whether this involves manufacturing, agriculture or efforts to control human behavior. Six social control strategies are discussed and illustrated: target removal, target devaluation, target insulation, offender incapacitation, offender exclusion and identification of offenses and offenders. In complex settings in a democratic society, relying primarily on technology to control human behavior has clear social and ethical limitations.

The Poverty of Social Control: explaining power in the historical sociology of the welfare state, Robert van Krieken, University of Sydney
Published in: Sociological Review 38(1) 1991: 1-25 - Abstract: The concept 'social control' has been criticised from a variety of quarters in recent years, particularly by historians and historical sociologists. However, it remains in common usage in sociological studies of welfare, deviance and social control. This paper shows, first, how this reliance on the concept of social control is rooted in a wider-ranging argument in social and political theory concerning the liberal-democratic fusion between the state and civil society, and that the lack of resolution of this argument is the foundation of the persistence of the concept social control in other areas of social inquiry, despite its repeated 'falsification'. Second, the paper highlights the main arguments against the use of 'social control' in explaining social order, in particular the misunderstanding of class, culture and power which its use encourages, and the paper will conclude with a discussion of alternative ways of conceptualising the operation of power in contemporary societies.

Social Control of Health Behaviors: A Comparison of Young, Middle-Aged, and Older Adults - Joan S. Tucker, David J. Klein and Marc N. Elliott -RAND Corp
Social control can positively influence health behaviors, but changes in social networks over time may cause older adults to experience less health-related social control. The size and composition of social control networks, and receipt of health-related social control, were examined in a probability sample of 509 household residents (aged 25–80 years) in Los Angeles County who completed a telephone survey. Compared with younger and middle-aged adults, older adults identified fewer people who attempted to influence their health behaviors and fewer health behaviors that others urged them to change. Older adults also reported less frequent social control attempts aimed at modifying their health behaviors, even after health status, health habits, and social network characteristics were controlled for. Possible explanations for these age-related differences are discussed. - psychsoc.gerontologyjournals.org/ cgi/content/abstract/59/4/P147

Narrative and Social Control - Critical Perspectives
Edited by: Dennis K. Mumby University of North Carolina
Series: SAGE Series in Communication Research
Description: "Readers will find Dennis K. Mumby's collection most useful for the connections it establishes between narrative analysis, in social setting and postmodern light. . . .What is important about this book is the range of projects presented using narrative to examine issues of power and control." --Discourse and Society. What is the relationship between narrative, society, and the forms of control that function in society? This critical analysis examines the role of narrative in the creation of various social realities in a variety of communication contexts. The central theme of Narrative and Social Control is that narrative is a pervasive form of human communication that is integral to the production and shaping of social order. Each chapter provides both a theoretical framework and an examination of narratives in a range of communication contexts--interpersonal, small group, organizational, and mass mediated--illustrating the far-reaching impact of narrative on our lives and social organizations. This critical perspective is essential reading for scholars, students, and professionals in communication studies, organization studies, family studies, cultural studies, sociology, political science, peace studies, anthropology, philosophy, and gender studies. - sagepub.com

Bad conversation? Gender and social control in a Kentish borough, c. 1450–c. 1570
KAREN JONES and MICHAEL ZELL
Humanities School, University of Greenwich, London
Abstract: The image of the nagging woman being ducked as a scold is firmly ensconced among popular images of women in the past, but the historical phenomenon of prosecutions for scolding, though it has been briefly touched on in many studies, has been the subject of only two substantial contributions, those of David Underdown and Martin Ingram. Underdown has maintained that from the 1560s there was increasing concern with scolds, which he links with the rise in witchcraft prosecutions and growing anxiety about domineering and unfaithful wives. Accepting the notion of a ‘crisis of order’ in the decades around 1600, he postulates as an aspect of this a ‘crisis in gender relations’ which he attributes to a decline in neighbourliness and social harmony resulting from the spread of capitalism. He bases his argument partly on literary sources, including plays, sermons and popular pamphlets (though conceding that literary evidence is not conclusive and that the misogynistic tradition in literature is a long one) and partly on a somewhat impressionistic survey of court records from around 1560 to around 1640. This period, he claims, witnessed an intense preoccupation with women perceived as threatening the patriarchal order, manifested by greater numbers of prosecutions of scolds and other disorderly women than in the preceding and subsequent periods, and by more severe punishments, notably the cucking-stool. Women accused as scolds, he maintains, were usually poor, widows, newcomers, social outcasts or ‘those lacking the protection of a family’, and were likely to vent their frustration on local notables as the nearest symbols of authority. He suggests that both the prosecution of scolds and their punishment by ducking were more common in towns and wood-pasture villages than in arable areas (such as that around Fordwich in Kent, the borough we will be looking at); however, he admits that rural records have survived less well than urban, and gives no quantified evidence for the alleged lenience of the authorities in arable villages towards ‘disorderly’ women.

A Behavioral Analysis of a Social Control Agency: Synanon
Robert L. Karen, San Diego College Ph.D., (Psychology), 1965, Arizona State University
Roland C. Bower, San Diego State College M.A. (Sociology), 1961, University of California, Los Angeles
The function of the therapeutic agency is essentially no more than the control of social behavior, and agents of the therapeutic agency use techniques based on a particular theory of behavior causation and control. In the behavioral analysis, emphasis is placed on past and present environmental conditions and their effects on current behavior. The agent or therapist thus manipu lates the person's environment to produce changes in behavior through social interaction.
Synanon, a group aimed at rehabilitating narcotics addicts, provides an interesting example of a social control agency in a setting which uses, among other things, principles of operant conditioning (conditioning of speech and movement) through the definition of overt response classes (responses having similar or identical consequences and occurring in the same stimulus situation), response contingent consequences (consequences that consistently occur as the result of certain responses—reinforce ment or punishment), and other behavior control procedures through its program of membership interaction. Documents, interviews, and field observations provide examples of Synanon procedures (especially operant conditioning) that are analogous to those employcd by modern behavior therapists. Synanon's program, although it has some weaknesses, is relatively successful in helping the member to overcome his addiction to narcotics. - jrc.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/5/1/18

Misconduct and Social Control in Science: Issues, Problems, Solutions
Mary Frank Fox, John M. Braxton
The Journal of Higher Education, Vol. 65, No. 3, Special Issue: Perspectives on Research Misconduct (May - Jun., 1994), pp. 373-383 doi:10.2307/2943973
Abstract: This article analyzes the roles of segments of the trans-scientific community in exercising social control of misconduct, the limitations on control, and implications for policy on misconduct and its control. - jstor.org

Readings in the Social Control of Industry by A Committee of the American Economic Association
Review author[s]: L. Jay Atkinson, The Journal of Land & Public Utility Economics, Vol. 19, No. 1 (Feb., 1943), pp. 112-114 doi:10.2307/3158985
This is a selection of fifteen articles from economics and law journals. - jstor.org

APPALACHIAN WOMEN - Violence and Social Control
PATRICIA L. GAGNÉ
Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Vol. 20, No. 4, 387-415 (1992) DOI: 10.1177/089124192020004001 © 1992 SAGE Publications
The findings from case study research conducted in a small, rural central Appalachian community during the winter of 1987-1988 suggest that standard definitions of wife abuse obscure the elements of social control inherent in violent activities, while obviating the relationship between violence and other forms of social control. Three categories of control are developed. The first, normative control, refers to socially accepted ways in which women's lives are constrained by norms and ideology. The second, persuasive control, refers to nonviolent means of social control, including repeated verbal requests, withholding transportation, forced parenthood, and the use of stereotypes and ideologies to isolate women. The third, violence, refers to the threat and use of physical assault and the use of weapons to instill fear. The context-specific approach is used to demonstrate that social control is dependent on a culture and social structure which condone men's domination of women and that without cultural acceptance of and structural support for men's authority over women, violence would be less effective as a means of social control. - jce.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/20/4/387

What are deviant behavior and social control? In chapter 1 of Deviant Behavior Erich Goode begins by debunking what he considers false conceptions of deviance. His "Five Misleading Definitions of Deviance" correspond to the misconceptions of many laypersons and several scholars as well.

Books on Social Control

Punishment and Social Control

Corporate Crime Law and Social Control

Images of Deviance and Social Control

Deviance and Social Control A Reader

A Study in Social Control

Sexology and Social Control Japan

Serfdom and Social Control in Russia

Social Threat and Social Control Religion Deviance and Social Control

German Catholics and Hitlers Wars

Social Control in Eighteenth Century Sabara

Catholicism social control and modernization