Social Control in a Local Community: The Role of the Apartment Superintendent

Abstract

This article examines order maintenance in a contemporary local community—the apartment house—and focuses on the social control activities woven into the role of the apartment superintendent as a low-status service occupation. While significant social control functions are expected of the superintendent, only weak sanctions are provided, and these are further offset by the countervailing sanctions available to tenants. The situation encourages two modes of adaptation: A strong emphasis on the selection of tenants who are likely to conform and the cultivation of good will of tenants through interpersonal relations and provision of services. Both serve the interests of landlords by, respectively, allowing owners to distance themselves from the “dirty work” of discrimination and providing built-in motivation for job performance in excess of minimum requirements for low-paid, largely unsupervised labor. The embedded system in which tenants and superintendents find themselves is, in effect, one in which they control each other for the benefit of the landlord.