Social Control: Meaning and Purpose

In one line

Social control is everything a society does to make its members behave as it expects, from a raised eyebrow to a prison sentence.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: social control is the sum of the means, processes and mechanisms by which a society regulates the behaviour of its members and secures conformity to its norms, values and expectations, thereby maintaining order and enabling the group to persist. E. A. Ross, who introduced the term into sociology, treated it as the means by which society influences human behaviour to maintain a given order. Mannheim described it as the sum of those methods by which a society tries to influence human behaviour to maintain a given order.

Definitions

• E. A. Ross: the system of devices whereby society brings its members into conformity with the accepted standards of behaviour.
• Mannheim: the sum of those methods by which a society tries to influence human behaviour to maintain a given order.
• Ogburn and Nimkoff: the patterns of pressure which a society exerts to maintain order and established rules.
• MacIver and Page: the way in which the entire social order coheres and maintains itself, and how it operates as a whole.
• Gillin and Gillin: the system of measures, suggestions, persuasion, restraint and coercion by whatever means, by which society brings into conformity the approved pattern of behaviour.

The characteristics

1. It is universal. Every society has it, because no group can persist without regulating its members.
2. It is exercised by the group over the individual, and by groups over other groups.
3. It may be conscious or unconscious, deliberate machinery or the unnoticed pressure of custom.
4. It uses both persuasion and coercion, and persuasion does most of the work.
5. It is a continuous process, not an occasional intervention.
6. It varies between societies in its means and its severity.
7. Its most effective form is internalised, so the person controls themselves, which is [Socialization].

The purpose of social control

MU names purpose expressly, so the answer needs it as a list with reasons.

To maintain social order. The primary purpose. Without regulation, the conflicting purposes of individuals would make cooperation impossible.

To secure conformity to norms, so that behaviour is predictable and people can rely on one another. Predictability is the precondition of every joint undertaking, including contract.

To maintain solidarity and unity, particularly through the reaffirmation that Durkheim identified in punishment, in [Crime and Social Deviance].

To preserve the social structure and the institutions, and thus to transmit the society across generations.

To restrain deviance, and to reclaim those who deviate.

To regulate conflict, not to abolish it. Conflict is permanent, as [The Conflict Perspective] shows, and social control channels it into forms the society can survive, which is Dahrendorf's institutionalisation of conflict.