Week #7 Social Control: Power and the Organization of Society

Who said "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains?"

Jean-Jacques Rousseau in The Social Contract (1762)

norms

expectations or rules of behavior

social deviance

any transgression of socially established norms

informal deviance

minor violations of social norms that may or may not be punished

crime

the violation of laws enacted by society (AKA formal deviance)

social control

mechanisms that create normative compliance in individuals

formal social sanctions

mechanisms of social control by which rules or laws prohibit deviant criminal behavior

informal social sanctions

the usually unexpressed but widely known rules of group membership; the unspoken rules of social life

stigma

a negative social label that changes others’ behavior toward a person and therefore alters that person’s own self-concept and social identity

ex: homelessness, mental illness

total institutions (3 components)

1. Controls all the basics of day-to-day life

2. No barriers exist between the usual spheres of daily life

3. All activity occurs in the same place and under the same authority

 

Ex: mental hospitals, prisons, military, boarding school, nursing homes

Social Control Themes: Premodern —> Modern Period

Religious ideology --> Secularization

Feudalism --> Capitalism

Irrationality ("enchanted" world) --> Bureaucratization (rational)

Anarchic (anti-government) --> Statist (government)

social control example

botched draw and quartering execution of Robert-Francois Damiens for regicide on Place de la Greve; brutal execution example meant to deter people from regicide (worst crime u could do)

Punishment —> Disciplinary Society example

Public torture + execution of ‘Damiens the Regicide’ —> Mettray Penal Colony: a private reformatory institution housing boys aged 6-21; no walls, cells, chains; in their place, rigorous self-improvement programming

Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1975)

• 2 images

  • Public torture and execution of 'Damiens the Regicide'

  • Institutional life at Mettray Penal Colony

• Argument: social control throughout modern history

  • From punishing the 'body' to disciplining the 'soul'

  • The emergence of the disciples: psychology, psychiatry, education, sociology, medicine

    • The more visible you make a population (by researching them), the more easier you can control them

  • More effective as a tool of social control

  • It's about power, not progress

panopticon

• A circular building composed of an inner + outer rings designed to serve as a prison

• Prison guards in inner ring can observe the prisoners without them knowing whether or not they're being watched

• Metaphor for society at large

panopticonism

social theory that posits that the dominant social institutions of modern life result in a totalizing state of surveillance that becomes internalized by subjects

• In foucault's terms, the "constitution of the subject"

social control: sociological perspectives

functionalism

• Norms and deviance promote social order and cohesion

• The glue that holds society together

social control: sociological perspectives

conflict theory

• Norms and deviance promote consent

• Constructed and enforced by elites to justify the "status quo" of inequality

Ex: The Wall by Pink Floyd on education --> education subdues children to make a submissive, obedient population (dehumanization, no creativity, children into meat grinder visual)

social control: sociological perspectives

symbolic interactionism

• Normative/deviant behavior policed via interactions

• Labelling theory; stigmatization

power

the ability to carry out one's own will despite resistance

what is the issue for positivism / methodology regarding power?

a difficult concept/phenomena to observe

• doesn't mean it's not there

what are the different dimensions of power?

1st dimension (simple, behavioral), 2nd dimension (complex, anti-behavioral), 3rd dimension (hegemonic, ideological)

1st Dimension (simple, behavioral)

the ability for person/group 'a' to get person/group 'b' to do what 'a' wants (getting someone to behave/do something that they may not want to)

2nd Dimension (complex, anti-behavioral)

the ability for person/group 'a' to influence agenda in a way that constrains the decisions of other groups/people

3rd Dimension (hegemonic, ideological)

the ability of person/group 'a' to dominate the agenda by creating a rationalized ideology that reinforces their power

ex: American Dream, Low turnout in U.S. among Youth, Poor, and Minorities

• "We don't know enough to have an informed opinion and should stay out of it--we're too young and should leave it up to others with more experience and knowledge"

• "The system is rigged so you're wasting your time"

strain theory

Robert Merton's theory that deviance occurs when a society does not give all its members equal ability to achieve socially acceptable goals

Ex: Tony Montana from film Scarface, Tony Soprano The Sopranos, Katniss Everdeen The Hunger Games, Mulan, Walter White Breaking Bad