Social Control: Meaning and Purpose

To protect the weak from the strong, which is the purpose most visible in modern law and least visible in custom.

To bring about social change in an ordered way, which is the purpose that connects this module to Module IV.

The means of social control

The classification most often asked for, before the formal and informal division of the next chapter.

Custom. The oldest and, in traditional societies, the most powerful. It works without any agency, because everybody knows it and everybody enforces it.

Folkways and mores, from [Norms and Values].

Religion, whose power lies in reaching conduct that no observer sees, and which attaches sanctions beyond human reach.

Morality and conscience, the internalised standard.

Public opinion, the approval and disapproval of the community. In small societies it is nearly irresistible; in cities it is much weaker, which is exactly the difference [Social Disorganization] describes.

Ridicule, gossip, praise and ostracism, the mechanisms through which public opinion is actually applied. Ostracism, exclusion from the group, is the strongest informal sanction there is.

Education, which transmits the norms and the disposition to obey them.

Propaganda and the mass media, which now set much of what is regarded as normal, as [Mass Media and Its Impact] describes.

Leadership, which sets an example that others follow.

Law, the formal, codified, state-enforced means, treated in the next chapter.

Coercion and force, the last resort, and the least efficient because it must be continuously applied.

Ross's own distinction, and why it matters

Ross distinguished the means that work by sympathy, sociability and a sense of justice, which he thought natural, from those that work by deliberate design: law, education, religion, custom and public opinion. The distinction is dated in its psychology and useful in its point: a society is held together far more by ordinary fellow feeling than by any machinery, and the machinery only handles what fellow feeling does not.

That proposition is the sociological answer to a question law students often ask: why does a society with an overwhelmed and slow legal system nevertheless function? Because law was never doing most of the work.

A worked example

In a housing society, residents are expected not to play loud music after eleven at night.

Count the mechanisms in order of how often they operate.

Internalised norm. Most residents simply do not, because they think it wrong to disturb others. No mechanism is engaged at all, and this accounts for the overwhelming majority of compliance.

Public opinion and informal sanction. A resident who does is met with looks in the lift, a remark from a neighbour, and the knowledge that they are being discussed. Most stop here.

Group pressure through the association, a notice on the board, an item in a meeting, a word from the secretary.

The society's own by-laws, a written rule with a small penalty, which is formal control by an association rather than by the state.

Law and the state. A complaint under noise regulation, police attendance, a prosecution.

Notice the shape of the list. Each step is slower, costlier and rarer than the one above it, and the state's machinery is engaged in almost no cases. Law is the last and smallest layer of social control, and a society that had to rely on it for ordinary conduct could not be policed at all. A student who understands that has understood Module II, and it is the proposition on which [Formal and Informal Social Control] and much of Module IV rest.

The criticisms

1. Whose order? The concept assumes that the order maintained is a shared one, and the conflict perspective replies that it is somebody's order, maintained against others. Social control is then a neutral-sounding name for domination.
2. It can suppress necessary change. Effective control over deviance is also effective control over reform, since every reform begins as deviance, as [Crime and Social Deviance] shows.
3. The term is very broad, covering everything from a joke to imprisonment, which weakens its analytical usefulness.
4. It exaggerates order. Societies are far less regulated and far more contested than the concept implies.
5. Foucault's objection, from [Post Modernism]: modern control is not chiefly repressive at all but works through observation, record and classification, and it produces conduct rather than merely restraining it.

Quick revision

1. Social control is the sum of means by which a society secures conformity to its norms and maintains order. Ross introduced the term; Mannheim's definition is the one usually quoted.
2. Characteristics: universal, exercised by the group, conscious or unconscious, persuasive and coercive, continuous, variable, and most effective when internalised.
3. Purposes: maintain order; secure conformity and predictability; maintain solidarity; preserve institutions; restrain deviance; regulate conflict rather than abolish it; protect the weak; and permit ordered change.
4. Means: custom, folkways and mores, religion, morality, public opinion, ridicule and ostracism, education, media, leadership, law, force.
5. Ostracism is the strongest informal sanction; force is the least efficient because it must be applied continuously.
6. Law is the last and smallest layer. Most compliance is internalised and engages no mechanism at all.
7. Criticism: whose order; it suppresses reform along with deviance; the term is too broad; it exaggerates how orderly societies are; and Foucault's point that modern control produces conduct rather than repressing it.

Test yourself

1. Define social control and state its purposes. The sum of the means, processes and mechanisms by which a society regulates its members' behaviour and secures conformity to its norms, so that order is maintained and the group persists. Its purposes are to maintain order; to secure conformity so that behaviour is predictable and cooperation possible; to maintain solidarity; to preserve institutions and transmit the society; to restrain deviance and reclaim deviants; to regulate rather than abolish conflict; to protect the weak against the strong; and to allow change to occur in an ordered way.

2. Name eight means of social control. Custom; folkways and mores; religion; morality and conscience; public opinion; ridicule, gossip and ostracism; education; the mass media; leadership; law; and coercion or force. Of these, ostracism is the most powerful informal sanction, and force the least efficient because it must be applied continuously and cannot reach conduct that is unobserved.

3. Why is social control most effective when internalised? Because most conduct is never observed and most rules are never enforced, so any system relying on detection would fail. A person who has internalised a norm through socialisation conforms without any external mechanism operating, and would feel shame in doing otherwise. The formal machinery is engaged only in the small residue of cases where internalisation and informal pressure have both failed.

4. Where does law sit among the means of social control? Last and smallest. Compliance with any ordinary norm is secured first by internalisation, which engages no mechanism; then by public opinion and informal sanction; then by the pressure of an organised group; then by written rules of a private association; and only then by the law and the state. Each step is slower, costlier and rarer than the one before it, so a society that relied on law for ordinary conduct could not be policed at all.

5. Give two criticisms of the concept. That it assumes the order maintained is shared, whereas the conflict perspective holds that it is the order of particular groups maintained against others, so that social control becomes a neutral name for domination. And that effective control over deviance is necessarily control over reform as well, since every reform begins as a departure from an existing norm, so a society that suppressed deviance completely could never change.