Social Control Agencies Research Articles

The security impact of Nigerian fallow tourist attractions on the residents of surrounding communities

Amidst globalisation, tourism industry has emerged as a huge revenue source for different countries across the globe, most especially in the developed world. Nigeria is one of the developing countries that are yet to fully tap their tourism potentials, due to many socio-political factors. Beyond undermining the country’s quest for economic diversification, fallow tourist attractions across the country hypothetically negate internal safety and security, hence the need for empirical researches to inform policy interventions. This study specifically focused on Zuma Rock (in Niger state) to examine the relationship between the rock’s physical surrounding and criminal occurrences, analyse the feeling of safety among the residents of communities surrounding it, and establish the extent of their confidence in the formal agencies of social control. The study utilised area life cycle model to view the place of the rock in relation to other developed tourist sites, which shows it remains at the first stage of tourism development. Further, insight was drawn from defensible space theory to analyse the relationship between the rock’s physical environment and crime. A mixed-methods approach involving quantitative and qualitative data was adopted for the study. A total of 304 respondents across five communities surrounding the rock were randomly selected for questionnaire administration, and additional 80 were judgementally selected for a total of 10 FGD sessions—two in each of the five selected communities. In light of the area life cycle and defensible space framework, the study found that failure to develop a notable tourist attraction breeds crime. It is also found that the study population live in fear due to the prevalence of violent crimes in the rock’s vicinity, and their lack of confidence in formal law enforcement agents. It is therefore recommended that government should prioritise the development of the destination while making effort to strengthen the law enforcement agencies.

북한 치안체제의 역할과 기능에 관한 연구

The purpose of this study is to understand the social control system of the Kim Jong-un government by examining the roles and functions of the North Korean Kim Jong-un government's security system.
 From the inauguration of the Kim Jong-un government in 2012 to 2022, the role and function of national policy, public security policy, and the Ministry of Social Security, which constitute the security apparatus, were analyzed in detail. The outline of the detailed research is as follows: First, in order to analyze the role and function of the security policy in North Korea, theoretical discussions for the analysis of the security system were developed, and the theory of political system analysis and political system approach were introduced. The research analysis framework was constructed through the Narrow-Gauge theory, which emphasizes the distinctiveness of the political system, and the Super Mixed Mode Dictatorship approach.
 Through this, the study was conducted by dividing the Kim Jong-un government into the 1st power hereditary period, 2nd period of power building, 3rd period of power stabilization, and 4th period of power instability.
 Second, the ruling ideology and national policy of the Kim Jong-un government were examined. Third, the role and function of the public security system of the Kim Jong-un government were examined.
 North Korea's Ministry of Social Security is based on protecting Chairman Kim Jong-un and the Workers' Party of North Korea, and monitoring and controlling counterrevolutionary activities that threaten the dictatorship, rather than what is stipulated in the People's Security Control Act.
 In particular, Chairman Kim Jong-un operates the Defense Security Bureau, the Ministry of State Security, Ministry of Social Security, and Ministry of National Defense as direct agencies, strengthening the one-man rule system.
 The main role of Ministry of Social Security is, first, the enforced propagation of the ruling ideology, and second, the implementation of intricate social control policies.
 The primary functions of social safety encompass maintaining public order, engaging in crime prevention activities, identifying and apprehending criminals, conducting sanitary inspections, managing resident registrations, overseeing overseas diplomatic missions, and supervising prison facilities. Notably, it is responsible for conducting extrajudicial house searches, inspecting lodgings, carrying out involuntary examinations, making arrests, and managing detention functions.
 As for future research tasks, it is necessary to more organically analyze the roles and functions of the Kim Jong-un administration's three major social control agencies, such as the Ministy of Social Security, the Ministry of National Security, and the Defense Security Bureau. This is because these institutions are key pillars supporting the Kim Jong-un Government.

Teenagers Indulgement in Drug: A Study on Different Socio-Economic Groups in Urban and Rural Bangladesh

Abstract: Objective: To find out the causes, level of knowledge and sources of drugs among drug addicted teen agers. Materials & Methods: It was cross sectional mixed method type of study conducted at different shelter homes at Dhaka and Mymensingh from January 2022 to November 2022. Study population were the teen agers, age 14-19 years old patients admitted to the shelter homes. Data was collected by face to face interview with pretested structured and unstructured questionnaire. Results: Majority of the respondent 41.2% was between the age group 17 & 18 and 73%^ were college going. 51.3% of the respondent were from a family with 43 people. Majority 57.2% father’s education was graduate level and mothers 34.8% were secondary or equitable passed. 41.7% father was service holder and majority 69.51% of the mother was housewives. Mean family income was 63320.86  27362.44. Maximum teen agers 43.85% believe drugs increases the joy of life and 90% of the respondent knowledge regarding different sides of drug abuse is poor. Conclusion: The study revealed that teen agers knowledge regarding different sides of drug abuse is poor. Different government, non-government organization, traditional social control agencies, law enforcement organizations and research in intervention program about different aspect of drugs indulgent need to be done to increase knowledge level of teen agers against drug addiction.

Риторика агентов социального контроля в отношении профилактики противоправного поведения молодежи

Зарубежные исследования свидетельствуют о низкой эффективности профилактического социального контроля. В России подтверждением тому являются негативные тенденции развития противоправного поведения, которые, в первую очередь, выражаются в его росте, омоложении и феминизации. Изучение причин неэффективности профилактики можно проводить не только на основе рассмотрения негативных результатов профилактического воздействия, но и путем анализа оценок, даваемых агентами социального контроля. Для этого предлагается осмыслить предмет в рамках социального конструктивизма, который рассматривает социальный контроль как коммуникацию в социальных взаимодействиях, предполагающую передачу некоторой информации, идей, конструктов социальной реальности посредством знаков и символов. Для изучения коммуникации использован метод деконструкции риторики агентов профилактики (работников полиции, школы, соцзащиты). Автор обрисовывает теоретические рамки изучения риторик, представляет результаты анализа транскриптов фокусированного интервью с экспертами. В качестве экспертов выступили представители полиции, школы, государственных и негосударственных учреждений социальной защиты населения, занимающихся профилактикой противоправного поведения. Деконструированы риторики, касающиеся взаимодействия агентов профилактической работы с молодежью. Исследование показало, что состояние этой деятельности описывается агентами контроля либо в идиоме опасности, либо с использованием лейтмотивов бедствия. У представителей полиции и школы субъективное восприятие угрозы связано с неэффективной деятельностью соответствующих учреждений и недостаточной заинтересованностью родителей. Эксперты использовали также конструкты риторики наделения правом, которые ассоциированы с расширением полномочий самих агентов контроля. Представители государственных и негосударственных организаций социальной защиты при описании состояния профилактической деятельности чаще используют лейтмотивы бедствия. Они связывают угрозы с недостаточным вниманием государства к проблеме профилактики противоправного поведения молодежи. Это выражается в скудной финансовой поддержке, непродуманности законов, сокращении сотрудников, неоправданно жестком контроле деятельности агентов профилактической работы.

No City for Young Boys: The Hate U Give, When They See Us and African American Youth

Contradictions between precious ideals and social realities are often handled by locating the problems of inequality in a limited setting, so that the rest of social life will not be disturbed. Racial inequality in America, starting with slavery, is concretely expressed in the troubled relations between agencies of social control, like the police, and racial minority communities. Two recent movies, The Hate U Give and When They See Us, deal with issues of extreme injustice in contacts between African American young men and the police who patrol their communities. The history of movies and real events shows these issues recurring. In spite of efforts to mend the difficult relationship, many recent scandals have raised alarms for the continuation of progress in race relations. Police shootings of unarmed young men and wrongful convictions of innocent young men have led to the “Black Lives Matter” movement and a recent outpouring of movies of protest by African American moviemakers.

The legend of the Slender Man: The boogieman of surveillance culture

Western societies have developed a culture of surveillance that frames how social actors understand institutional and vernacular forms of “watching”. Through the intersection of folklore, anthropology, and sociology, I explore the performances of the Slender Man legend as a monstrous cultural artifact representative of cultural anxieties around surveillance, social control, and secretive agencies. This blend of disciplines will help illuminate central cultural fears and anxieties within Internet sub-cultural groups. My goal in this paper is to understand how participants of alternate reality games (ARGs) exhibit anxieties about ubiquitous surveillance through uncoordinated collective storytelling.

Inequalities in the workforce distribution in the Brazilian Dentistry

ABSTRACT This article aimed to describe the distribution of dental professionals in Brazil, through a narrative review. The approach is based on the assumptions which lead the individual in choosing such career and as well as their fragmented current practices due to the university educational curriculum process. Furthermore, data are revised on the geographical distribution of these individuals and the potential impacts, among others, in the epidemiological profile of the population oral health problems. It was evident that the workforce shifts as presented in different ways in society and influenced by social needs, public policy and market, play special roles. It discusses the urgency of socio-spatial redistribution of dentists, a role to be played collaboratively among different States in Brazil, regulatory and social control agencies. Finally, the role of dental courses in forming active subjects was highlighted, in the process of health improvement, aiming to build a more equitable and just society.

La tele-E-Health in carcere. Collaborazione e innovazione

The future of drug treatment services in today’s digital society (web society) depends, among other things, on the interoperability between health care information systems and other information systems linked to social control agencies, police forces and the judiciary. Agreements and partnerships between such different institutional actors should be strengthened, with regard to both old addictions (to psychoactive substances), and ones (regarding Internet, gambling, and so on). Possible areas of interoperability and related problems should be analyzed. We focus on four points: a) the impact models and tools of tele-e-Health in prison; b) the intertwining between e-government and new digital privacy rules with regard to addictions; c) the operational networks of inter-institutional cooperation (e.g. the recovery paths for addicted subjects reported to the judiciary); d) a federal model of tele-cooperation in prison as example of interoperability between institutions.

Tele-e-Health in prison. Innovation and collaboration

The future of drug treatment services in today’s digital society (web society) depends, among other things, on the interoperability between health care information systems and other information systems linked to social control agencies, police forces and the judiciary. Agreements and partnerships between such different institutional actors should be strengthened, with regard to both old addictions (to psychoactive substances), and ones (regarding Internet, gambling, and so on). Possible areas of interoperability and related problems should be analyzed. We focus on four points: a) the impact models and tools of tele-e-Health in prison; b) the intertwining between e-government and new digital privacy rules with regard to addictions; c) the operational networks of inter-institutional cooperation (e.g. the recovery paths for addicted subjects reported to the judiciary); d) a federal model of tele-cooperation in prison as example of interoperability between institutions.

Competitive Violence and the Micro-Politics of the Fight Label

Although physical fighting is a common theme in research on youth, crime, and schools, social scientists have only rarely confronted a basic question: What makes a fight a ‘fight’? The label and its application are highly consequential for violent actors and social control agencies. Based on several years of longitudinal ethnographic fieldwork with several dozen American youth involved in violence (including a qualitative dataset of 189 violent encounters), the analysis documents the meaning of physical fights as a distinctive form of violent interaction. First, a definition of a ‘fight’ from the sample members' perspective is presented: a stretch of serious, competitive, hand-to-hand violence. Next, the article turns to the ‘micro-politics’ of labelling violence by institutions of discipline and control. By treating violence as a mutual fight, social control agents implicitly deny the roles of ‘victim’ and ‘perpetrator’. Police and school officials may creatively invoke the fight label either to avoid taking action or to punish all parties involved in violence on the street, in the home or at school. Finally, the discussion concludes by addressing variations in how violence is labelled across social ecologies and socioeconomic contexts, and the interrelated nature of the ‘fight’, ‘violence’ and ‘victim’ labels.

Try to Control Yourself: The Regulation of Public Drinking in Post-Prohibition Ontario, 1927-44 by Dan Malleck

Reviewed by: Try to Control Yourself: The Regulation of Public Drinking in Post-Prohibition Ontario, 1927-44 by Dan Malleck Christine Sismondo Malleck, Dan – Try to Control Yourself: The Regulation of Public Drinking in Post-Prohibition Ontario, 1927-44. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2013. Pp. 305. Like all perfectly-titled books, Dan Malleck’s Try to Control Yourself: The Regulation of Public Drinking in Post-Prohibition Ontario, 1927-44, summarizes his argument succinctly. In a nut, the end of Prohibition represented a new, more moderate phase in Ontario moral regulation, one in which the newly constructed “citizen-drinker” became a participant in a complex and highly bureaucratic negotiation between political power and the body. From 1916 to 1927, there was a total prohibition on alcohol in Ontario and, as such, until repeal, there was no legal public drinking and no “citizen-drinker.” In Malleck’s view, this period was a legislative excess, since there was no room for negotiation. Repeal, therefore, represented the scaling back of excess and a move towards a more moderate approach. In turn, the 1927 Liquor Control Act requested that the “citizen-drinker” be moderate, too, unlike the pre-prohibition [End Page 268] drinker, who has been characterized as intemperate. Malleck sees the 1927 LCA, which birthed the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, as evidence of “temperance” in government—a neat turn of phrase and concept that fits in well with his Foucauldian framework. Since it’s tempting to begin a study of public drinking in Ontario in 1934 (when licensed beverage rooms were first allowed), Malleck’s choice to delve into the transition period from 1927 to 1934 is especially revelatory. Purchasing alcohol was legal, but only with an individual permit. Through this bureaucratic tool, which could be revoked at the discretion of the Liquor Control Board, consumption could be tracked and, to some degree, controlled. Individuals that held both Standard Hotel licenses and liquor permits produced the most anxiety for the Board, since they were in prime position to break the law and profit from semi-public drinking. Many hotel owners and employees were caught selling alcohol to guests who held parties in private rooms or, occasionally, in the public spaces of the hotel. We might assume that the repercussions for violating the conditions of both licenses would be swift and harsh and that hoteliers risked losing their livelihood with every quick sale of liquor. Not so, says Malleck, whose research involved reading every LCBO Establishment File in six jurisdictions—Toronto, Ottawa, Niagara, Essex County, Waterloo County and Thunder Bay—and revealed a pattern of paternalism and leniency. One woman hotel-keeper caught selling liquor on New Year’s Eve 1929 was told to be a “good girl.” So, although the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO) is often portrayed as a tight regulatory agency, the control was primarily in the form of documentation and light reprimands, as opposed to strict enforcement. This is a significant departure from previous work that has interpreted the LCBO as an agency of tight social control. Malleck shows how liquor control was, instead, about disciplining subjects. From 1927 to 1934, pressure to allow beverage rooms in Ontario largely came from people who believed that making public drinking legal would give the economy a much-needed boost. Critics of the restrictive Liquor Control Act of 1927 argued that Ontario’s ban on bars and permit requirements made the province unattractive to American tourists, who were looking for a vacation from Prohibition. Four other provinces—British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba and Quebec had more liberal public drinking laws and, as such, were more competitive tourist destinations. When America began seriously debating repeal of its federal prohibition on alcohol, Ontario opted to review its laws, too. Of course, it’s unlikely that many post-Prohibition Americans would have been enticed by Ontario’s sorry beverage rooms, since the restrictions were myriad and designed to make it as likely as possible that Ontarians would control themselves. Where many American states opted to allow cocktails, live music and saloon-style stand-up bars, Ontario’s beverage rooms could only serve small glasses of beer to seated patrons. These conditions, in addition to advertising and signage...

The Challenging World of Privacy Advocacy

The power and reach of government agencies and corporations have increased greatly in the last few decades, and the prospects, and threats, inherent in so-called “public private partnerships” now loom large. The terrorist attacks of the first decade of the new century have been ruthlessly exploited by national security agencies not only to recover but to considerably extend their powers, to give them even greater freedom from democratic controls, and to increase their resources. Law enforcement agencies and even social control agencies have gained powers as well, in part by clinging to the coat-tails of national security.

DESAFIOS EMERGENTES NO CENÁRIO DAS CIVILIZAÇÕES TECNOLÓGICAS

Este artigo tem por objetivo considerar, à luz dos estudos de Norbert Elias sobre o processo civilizador, os desafios emergentes no cenário das civilizações tecnológicas, em que as interações se reconfiguram e se redimensionam no bojo do movimento de incorporação das novas tecnologias da informação e da comunicação. Para tanto, examinam-se os processos relacionais e suas conotações face às realidades virtuais, às tecnologias de inteligência e às ecologias cognitivas tratadas por Pierre Lévy, as quais se processam sob a égide de diferentes temporalidades e territorialidades, imbricadas com as redes de relações e as agências de controle e autocontrole, presentes no processo civilizador.

Female-Female Non-Partner Assault: A Political-Economic Theory of Street Codes and Female-Gendered Culture in the Contemporary African-American Inner City

In this article we present a theory of the prevalence of female-female non-partner violence in the African-American inner city. We employ `ghetto' (economic) and `internal colony' (political) models to illuminate dimensions of the African-American inner city which we view as proximal determinants of female-female interpersonal violence. These cultural and structural elements include conflict within the separate female-gendered cultural milieu centered in the female-headed household system, and the `rule of force' imposed by agencies of social control as the cultural model for dominance, oppression, and interpersonal violence. Verbatim accounts provided by respondents injured in female-female violent interactions are offered as illustrations of the theory.

La réaction sociale à la délinquance juvénile

JUVENILE DELINQUENCY AND SOCIAL REACTIONThe object of this research is to define the process of social reaction to juvenile delinquency, as well as the criteria used by the agencies of social control in deciding what factors brand the adolescent a delinquent. Starting with self-reported delinquency, we follow its course within the system of social regulations practised by the public, the police and the courts.The data concern self-reported delinquency (measured by the questionnaire of Nye and Short on self-reported delinquency), delinquency officially known to the police, and the decisions taken by the police and judges with regard to delinquent acts. These data were gathered in five districts in Montreal, representing five social strata.The analysis of the stigma of delinquency showed that there is more chance of working-class subjects entering the juvenile justice system, above all where acquisitive and rebellious delinquency is concerned, especially in relation to the community, the family and sex. Among the middle and upper classes the stigma of delinquency is attached more to aggression and rebellion connected with automobiles and vandalism.As to the origins of social reaction ¦— the way in which an adolescent is admitted to the juvenile justice system .— the citizen reports offences against his person and property, while the police record offences against public order and morals.At the police level, the adolescent is returned to his home if it is a question of rebellion committed by a group between the ages of 12 and 15, whereas he is taken to court if his offence, reported by the citizen, is repeated and of a more serious nature. In the case of those taken to court, the adolescent is detained if he is a recidivist, and receives a summons if it is his first offence.The judges favor special measures in the case of rebelliousness, and no action at all (postponement sine die) in the case of aggression or theft by adolescents of the working class. A recidivist will be institutionalized for a serious infraction and treated within the community in the case of a less serious offence. Re-education in the community is given if the adolescent has been detained, and a fine if he has received a summons.The results clearly show that the characteristics of the delinquent acts are more important than the socioeconomic milieu in determining whatdecisions are taken. However, the socioeconomic milieu does influence admission into the juvenile justice system, as well as judicial reaction. Working-class subjects are given less attention than those from the middle and upper classes, postponement sine die is more often used in the working-class milieu, and fines, re-education within the community and institu-tionalization are more often applied to subjects of the middle and upper classes. Moreover, the margin of discretionary powers in decision making is, on the whole, rather narrow, which means that in the majority of cases, decisions can be explained by no other factors than the characteristics of the delinquent acts. This discretionary margin in decision making is narrow, both at the police and judicial levels, when a choice between particular measures must be made ; on the other hand, there is some leeway, since the judge must choose between postponement sine die and a particular measure. Finally, the course of the offence within the juvenile justice system reinforces the previous decisions through a process of amplification, which, as a consequence, penalizes working-class subjects to some extent.In short, delinquency is an adolescent phenomenon in general, but only a minority of infractions enter and continue to circulate within the juvenile justice system. The criteria for decision making are indeed socio-economic, but more often relate to the past history of the delinquent and the nature of his offence.

Damn, It Feels Good to be a Gangsta: the Social Organization of the Illicit Drug Trade Servicing a Private College Campus

ABSTRACT This article examines the relationships and business practices of an informal Southern California drug dealing network servicing and, in many cases, run by college students of relatively privileged backgrounds. On the basis of qualitative interviews conducted with drug suppliers, the dealing mechanics, motives, and perceptions of the threat of punishment are explored. This network exists virtually unmediated by agencies of formal social control, despite the fact that their material culture, attitudes, and behaviors are frequently similar to those of their street-level counterparts. This ongoing field study underscores the idea that the war on drugs ignores a significant segment of drug dealing and using Americans.

Mental Labor and the Cultural Work of Agency Panic

In the last twenty years historians and cultural analysts have thoroughly reconsidered the meaning of the 1950s. Once (mis)understood as a time of suburban anomie and Cold War anxiety and, at the same time, nostalgically, as a golden moment of prosperity and consensus, the postwar period now appears well-fraught in the literature. In this context, it's fair to ask if the field really needs one more book self-avowedly reinterpreting the mainstream of the 1950s, even one that persuasively corrects the influential claims of Thomas Hill Schaub and Morris Dickstein that mid-century literature abandoned the economic for the psychological (1). On first glance, Hoberek's book appears merely to extend this fundamental rethinking of the postwar period. But, in my mind, one of the least expected results of the decentering of the experiences of the Organization Man in postwar accounts has been the ability to see what once appeared to be an objective description of mid-century American society as an classspecific effort by members of the professional-managerial class to claim a universalizing authority to shape society to their imperatives. Indeed, the ability of white-collar workers to see their world as uniform was effectively, if perhaps unconsciously, a bid to defend their hegemonic position in American society, a position they perceived as increasingly insecure. As Timothy Melley shows in Empire of Conspiracy (2000), cultural critics, fiction writers, social scientists, and FBI Director Hoover all noted disturbing threats to individual agency in the postwar period. Impersonal agencies of social control variously figured as advertising, the total organizations of mass society, secret government agencies, or conspiratorial subcultures were not only targeting individuals with

Theorising Power and Resistance among “Travellers”1

This paper (re-)examines the literature on Traveller communities in the United Kingdom by combining parts of Michel Foucault's and Michel de Certeau's theoretical legacies. Following an ethnographic summary, I demonstrate the relevance of Foucault and Certeau for a critical understanding of the Travellers’ structural predicaments and ideological resistance in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. I argue that Foucault's outline of modern power, surveillance and classification sheds new light on the impact of social control agencies and the implementation of legislative changes, such as the 1968 Caravan Sites Act, on (semi-)nomadic and/or self-employed groups. The implications of more recent legal developments are discussed as symptoms of postmodernity and the further ideological marginalisation of “non-consuming nomads”. I then argue that some of Certeau's key concepts, including the “strategies/tactics” distinction, illuminate the Travellers’ modalities of resistance and symbolisms of difference. Completing a two-way dynamic between theory and data, the article also shows that existing empirical material on Travellers highlights some of the weaknesses in Foucault's and Certeau's respective thought. Finally, I turn to Foucault's “analytics” to account for intra-group power and resistance, and hence to challenge the common portrayal of Foucault as a “theorist of domination” in juxtaposition to Certeau as a “theorist of subversion”.

Community action and the regulation of alcohol availability: Modelling the connections

In Australia, as in other countries, recent initiatives aimed at reducing alcohol-related harm have focused on the local community as the site of interventions, and in many cases have included local controls on alcohol availability as a key component. In this process, liquor licensing authorities – as the statutory agency primarily responsible for regulating alcohol availability – have been called upon to act as instruments of public health. Historically, however, their primary function has not been to promote public health, but rather to maintain orderly markets. Moreover, their power to intervene in market processes has in many instances been curtailed under deregulatory policies accompanying globalisation. Taken together, these trends generate a need for a theoretically-informed understanding of the role of liquor licensing bodies and other regulatory agencies in a context of locally-based initiatives aimed at reducing alcohol-related problems. This paper proposes a conceptual framework for meeting this need. Liquor regulatory systems are seen as agencies of social control mandated by the state. Three key components of these systems are identified: 1) laws and regulations governing the activities of liquor licensing authorities; 2) the structure and resourcing of agencies established to uphold the laws and regulations, and 3) practices through which decisions are reached by the licensing authorities. Each of these has influence independently of, but also in interaction with, each other. The initiation of local action focusing on alcohol problems generates a complex social field within which economic and political agencies, some operating at a purely local level, others at a national or even global level, compete to promote and defend their interests, and in which culturally ascribed beliefs and practices associated with drinking alcohol at the micro-social level are endorsed, challenged and/or defended. Within this field, liquor licensing authorities become agencies upon which competing claims are made. The processes involved can be analysed in terms of four phases: 1) agenda setting and problem definition; 2) specification of alternatives; 3) decision-making; 4) implementation. The components and processes outlined in the paper are illustrated with reference to instances of local action in northern Australia. The model proposed will serve, it is argued here, as a framework for more systematic comparative analysis of such local actions.

The mosque and social control in Edinburgh's Muslim community

The present paper is based on an ethnographic study of the social organisation of one of the main mosques (Markazi Jamia Masjid‐i‐Anwar‐i‐Madina) in Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland. The main focus of the paper is the ways the mosque operates as an agency of social control among the Muslim population of Edinburgh. This study identifies sabaq—mosque‐based religious education of young Muslims—and the Jom'a (Friday) congregational prayer as the two main mechanisms of social control within the mosque. It is argued that while the social organisation of the mosque is, in some important ways, a response to and shaped by exclusionary practices in the wider society, it plays a central role in the maintenance of order in the Muslim community of Edinburgh.