Social Control Practices Research Articles

Gender-based violence and sexual and reproductive health and rights of adolescent girls in Senegal: an analysis of social control practices.

This article problematizes gender-based violence (GBV) as a social practice and explains its role as a social mechanism for controlling bodies. Based on a mixed methodological approach (combining questionnaires, qualitative interviews, focus groups, and participant observation) targeting both adolescent girls and community actors, this study reveals forms of GBV that are little explored among the adolescent population. Social practices, such as "nëpp nëppël" or the culture of silence, frequently conceal GBV within families, hindering reporting and thus limiting adolescents' access to sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) services and influencing their limited knowledge of SRHR. Shelter centres, such as Kullimaaroo, are crucially important in this context by providing holistic support to victims of GBV, but such structures are rare in Senegal. We conclude that it is necessary to adopt a holistic approach taking into account social practices to address the complex relationship between GBV and SRHR among adolescents in Senegal.

CONSTRUCTION OF IDENTITY IN THE DIGITAL AGE AND THE MECHANISMS OF SOCIAL CONTROL

The article analyzes the main approaches to understanding the nature of identity construction and the mechanisms of social control in the digital age. Digitalization, globalization, and the transition of modern society to a networked or digital state have created new conditions for constructing identity, which is becoming more flexible and changeable. A close relationship between the nature of identity formation and practices of social control has been proven. The construction of identity in the digital society is a complex process involving individuals’ interaction with technology, social media and information systems. This process serves as a form of social control, establishing norms, influencing behavior, and shaping identities by social, economic, and political interests. Social networks are becoming important channels of identity formation, where individuals interact with different groups and virtual communities. The regulatory, economic, and political control mechanisms in the digital environment are described. It is proved that online platforms contribute to the construction of social ties, which ensures social control by influencing the content and nature of interactions. They also form prevailing unified patterns and models of action, influencing the identity and social behavior of individuals. Information and communication technologies offer new opportunities for self-expression and self-identification, but at the same time pose challenges to the preservation of the personal self. Therefore, it is necessary to take these issues into account in studies of digital culture and social media. Identity is not isolated or autonomous but is formed through constant interconnections with society and under the influence of various mechanisms of social control. The subject always has the opportunity to create new forms of identity and go beyond fixed roles and functions. However, it is also important to find a balance between the use of digital technologies and the preservation of real communications, while minimizing the negative consequences.

Understanding Hegemony: A Critical Analysis through the Lens of Antonio Gramsci

Antonio Gramsci, an Italian Marxist philosopher and political theorist, introduced the concept of hegemony as a means to understand the complex dynamics of power and control within societies. This paper delves into Gramsci's theory of hegemony, exploring its origins, key components, and implications. Through a critical analysis of Gramsci's work, this paper seeks to illuminate how hegemony operates as a mechanism of social control, shaping ideologies, institutions, and everyday practices. By examining contemporary examples, it further elucidates the relevance and applicability of Gramsci's ideas in understanding power relations in the modern world.

Принципы американского подхода к КНР: идеология и борьба за влияние

The article analyzes the principles that determine the US policy towards the PRC in terms of ideological confrontation and struggle for the influence in the Indo-Pacific region. It is noted that such features of the Chinese political system as rule by law, autocracy and state-directed mercantilism are seen as its vulnerabilities. The U. S. competitive approach to the PRC is focused on exacerbating and exploiting them. China’s economic slowdown is expected to make the CCP uncertain of its own legitimacy and force the party to rely on authoritarian practices of social control to maintain political power. This, in its turn, will provoke social discontent and decrease support for the party among the population. Restrictions on Chinese technology companies and tightening of the counterintelligence regime against Chinese undergraduate and graduate students studying at U.S. universities are intended to impede China’s access to advanced technologies and developments. Beijing’s actions, interpreted as authoritarian practices, are used by Washington to rally allies and partners on the ideological basis and to justify sanctions. These actions include the re-education policy in Xinjiang, the Hong Kong policy, export of Chinese technological systems and internal control practices to the Indo-Pacific countries, and others. It is indicated that this approach was countered by the Washington’s right to free access to information and policy to protect Internet freedom. In the real world, it aims to undermine state control over information in countries that import Chinese practices of social control. The key role in implementing this approach is assigned to systems that will circumvent Internet traffic restrictions both in the Indo-Pacific states and in China itself. The U. S. approach to defense and security in the Indo-Pacific region focuses on the transition from a hub-and-spoke system to federated defense. It is recognized that while the federated approach initially focused on the U.S. allies, Washington is now integrating its regional partners as well. There are two stages in the implementation of this U.S. defense strategy. During the first stage, Washington creates separate elements of the future military alliance which still function as independent units. Such elements are represented by minilateral coalitions that are formed of states that have comparable or complementary capabilities in spheres that are key to China’s deterrence. These include AUKUS focused on building nuclear submarines, the upcoming trilateral alliance of Japan, South Korea, and the United States in missile defense, QUAD, and others. During the second stage, it is probably intended to unite the established coalitions under a single defense structure. It is pointed out that Washington’s choice in favor of this two-stage scheme is due to the need to refrain at the current stage from actions that would provoke the states of the region to choose a side between the United States and China, which would be inevitable in the case of creation of a full-fledged U.S. military alliance in the Indo-Pacific. It is noticed that the Biden administration effectively counters Beijing in international organizations. It has largely succeeded in frustrating China’s strategy to dominate them and in transforming them from within.

An assessment of municipal solid waste management system in Oshogbo, Osun State Nigeria: Challenges and prospects

The study empirically assessed the challenges and prospects of municipal solid waste management system in Oshogbo, Osun State, Nigeria. The study specifically looked into the current - status, the performance of municipal solid waste social control system of the city, and the households solid waste social control practice. Primary data were used and sourced through a well-design survey questionnaire, field observation, reviewing published and unpublished documents, and on spot access. Descriptive statistics was used for the data analysis. The main factors aggravating the present poor state of municipal solid waste social control of Oshogbo were revealed in the study. The results further showed that Osun state waste management agency is not leaving up to its responsibility and delay in collection of wastes, the activity of municipal solid waste social control of the town is majorly executed by micro and macro scale enterprises with very limited contribution of the agency saddled with such responsibilities. Besides this, there is no involvement of non- governmental organization and private sectors as the government of the day portrayed it. Inadequate solid waste social control pattern of the households. The first inadequacy of households is poor handling of short-lived storage material of various houses. That is, trash disposal around the waste container. Likewise, they are uncovering in the rain, light and heat, they do not take cognizance of sustainable solid social control actions for instance, reprocessing, reclaim and composting. Except, for the prohibited solid waste disposal. In addition, they are less motivated to clean their immediate environment. Thus, the study recommends that government waste management agency in conjunction with non-governmental organization should commence training on waste social control practices, with focus on women as agent of change in a community, while the institutions should leave up to their responsibilities.

Empirical study on the Cooperative Prevention and Control of Social Risks in Digital Enabling Cities

In order to tell the story of digital technology enabling urban social risk collaborative prevention and control from an empirical point of view, this paper first systematically combs the digital changes, digital characteristics and digital practice of urban social risk collaborative prevention and control in China, and clarifies the realistic background of social risk collaborative prevention and control in digital enabling cities. Secondly, on the basis of literature review and review, this paper clarifies the theoretical logic and operation mechanism of social risk collaborative prevention and control in digital enabling cities, and constructs the analytical framework of "dynamic mechanism-initial conditions-collaborative process-accidental factors". Third, through the network crawler to obtain the research document data and the statistical yearbook collection data data, has selected 7 explanation elements, takes 26 provincial people's governments as the research object, uses the QCA fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis method, carries on the inspection to the city social risk coordination prevention and control influence factor combination allocation. Fourth, three driving modes of urban social risk prevention and control are found, which are comprehensive development type, multi-factor driving type and high conversion ability type.

SOCIAL MOVEMENTS, SURVEILLANCE AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: ANATOMY OF STRUGGLE IN THE DIGITAL AGE

Recently, it is thought that social movements have been negatively affected by the developments in artificial intelligence and surveillance technologies. In the study, social movements are evaluated from a critical position, different from the mainstream. This critical approach is not subject-oriented but focused on social developments and processes. It is argued that artificial intelligence and surveillance technologies have a determining, dominating and monotonizing effect in the qualitative change and transformation processes that social movements have entered. It is thought that company monopolies in related fields are supportive of this change and transformation. It is claimed that social control practices are intensifying because of this transformation process that social movements have entered. Thus, it is argued that the participants of social movements are made passive. The work is divided into two parts. The first part focuses on the discussion of the conceptual framework, and the second part focuses on the analysis process. As a method, it was considered proper to subject the selected news texts to content analysis in the light of the determined keywords.

Interest Groups in Civil Society Representativeness and Social Control of the SUAS – Brazil

This article intends to carry out a theoretical reflection on the possible role of interest groups in spaces of discussion and deliberation that make up the social control of the Sistema Único de Assistência Social (SUAS)[1]. To help us in this discussion, we rescued some regulations that deal with the practice of social control in SUAS, placing them in dialogue with bibliographic references that help identify action opportunities by interest groups based on these legal prerogatives. In conclusion, it is possible to suppose that interest groups act directly or indirectly in the social control of SUAS, defending their own causes that can compromise the interests of the broader Brazilian population or even the part of the civil society they claim to represent.
 
 [1] Social Assistence Unified System

Beyond Cultural Mismatch Theories: The Role of Antiblackness in School Discipline and Social Control Practices

Black students face hyper-disciplining and high levels of social control when they enter American schools. The cultural mismatch hypothesis attempts to explain this hyper-disciplining by arguing that the mostly White teaching force misinterprets the attitudes and behaviors of Black students, which leads to their hyper-disciplining. Utilizing a longitudinal, deeply iterative, participatory, and critical ethnographic research process, however, this article shows that traditional scholarship around the cultural mismatch hypothesis is insufficient. The analysis indicates that teachers’ misinterpretation of mismatched capital (the traditional cultural mismatch hypothesis) is actually a racialized interpretation of both matched and mismatched capital coming from Black students, and such racialized interpretations are guided by the logic of antiblackness endemic to American institutions. Hence, this research argues for the integration of antiblackness as a theoretical tool to expand upon cultural mismatch explanations and for the creation of educational spaces where Black students are recognized, valued, and treated with dignity and humanization.

Violence by any other name: constructing immigration crises, the threat of the sick refugee and rationalising immigration detention through moral panic

This article is concerned with the employment of pathologising discourses of mental health and trauma by the mainstream media as they pertain to the treatment of migrants in detention in Canada. Using critical discourse analysis, this research contrasts mainstream media coverage of four major publications on immigration detention. It explores the media’s role in the (re)creation of refugee discourse, and as a purveyor of racial ideology, which problematises people of colour and demands state intervention in the form of mental health aid. The resulting discourse pathologises the refugee identity and simultaneously obscures the socio-political conditions and violence that necessitates their departure from their home countries. As refugee discourse is infused with biomedical understandings of mental health, it also legitimises the nation state’s practice of coercive social control for these populations through detention.

Incorporating Survey Perceptions of Public Safety and Security Variables in Crime Rate Analyses for the Visegrád Group (V4) Countries of Central Europe

Public governance has evolved in terms of safety and security management, incorporating digital innovation and smart-analytics-based tools to visualize abundant data collections. Urban safety and security are vital social problems that have many branches to be solved, simplified, and improved. Currently, we can see that data-driven insights have often been incorporated into planning, forecasting, and fighting such challenges. The literature has extensively indicated several aspects of solving urban safety problems, i.e., social, technological, administrative, urban, and societal. We have a keen interest in the data analysis and smart analytics options that can be deployed to enhance the presentation, promotional analysis, planning, forecasting, and fighting of these problems. For this, we chose to focus on crime statistics and public surveys regarding victimization and perceptions of crime. As we found through a review, many studies have indicated the vitality of crime rates but not public perceptions in decision-making and planning regarding security. There is always a need for the integration of widespread data insights into unified analyses. This study aimed to answer (1) how effectively we can utilize the crime rates and statistics, and incorporate community perceptions and (2) how promising these two ways of seeing the same phenomena are. For the data analysis, we chose four neighboring countries in Central Europe. We selected CECs, i.e., Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, and Slovakia, known collectively as the Visegrád Group or V4. The data resources were administrative police statistics and ESS (European Social Survey) statistical datasets. The choice of this region helped us reduce variability in regional dynamics, regime changes, and social control practices.

Housing Policies for asylum seekers and refugees, social control and social work practice in Greece

Since 2015, Greece has been one of the main host countries for many thousand people from Middle East who have been forced to leave their countries by political reasons. This article illustrates the housing policies for refugees and asylum seekers in Greece as part of a policy of power enforcement in micro and macro level, resulting to heir social exclusion. In this context, social workers have been at the forefront in order to respond to refugee and asylum seekers needs, facing limits to their work due to the social policies. The study constitutes an effort to provide an insight on the social work practice and the difficulties professionals face being a part of a social control policy. For this purpose, a qualitative method has been conducted via interviews with social work practitioners from non- governmental organizations serving asylum seeker and refugee population (NGOs) in Greece. Research analysis highlighted work overload along with limited training and support. At the same time, it is found that social workers do not comprehend housing policies for asylum seekers and refugees as policies which encourage integration, but rather contribute to a regime of control and exclusion. Although professionals reported that there have been attempts of resistance at the individual level, collective actions of resist control and repressive practices seem to be absent. Social work practice with asylum seekers and refugees in Greece seems to confront the neoliberal system which reproduces managerialism and, on the other hand the anti-immigrant rhetoric which embraces control policies. Within this context, social work profession is being challenged, raising concerns about the capacities and the restrictions social workers face by developing interventions which promote social change. Political analysis and involvement with service users’ groups, labor groups and collectivities’ groups need to come to the fore in order to address these challenges and to stand against any oppressive practice.

The Estonian “Little Singing Revolution” of 1960: From Spontaneous Practices to Ideological Manipulations

Abstract The article covers the 15th General Song Festival “20 Years of Soviet Estonia,” held in Tallinn in July 1960, with about 30,000 participants. During the festival, the choirs started to sing popular songs and banned songs on their own initiative, leading to the festival being called “a small singing revolution”. It was a time of changes when both the authorities and the people were testing the limits of what was allowed and forbidden. As the message of songs plays an important role in influencing the people, the authorities hoped to exploit the song festival tradition in their own interest. The goal of Khrushchev’s new cultural policy was to promote the Soviet model for success to the West and to activate foreign relations. The intermediation of cultural contacts required breaking the anti-Soviet attitudes prevailing among the Baltic exiles, and for this purpose diverse tactics were applied. The article analyses the different manifestations of the people’s will both in Estonia and among the exile community as well as the measures and manipulations of the authorities. Thus, diverse practices of social control unfolded in the context of 1960 from initiatives to support each other to against state surveillance and exclusion.

Birds, Dogs, and Racism: Conflicts over Care in New York’s Central Park

In May 2020, Christian Cooper, a Black man and avid birder in New York City’s Central Park, was reported to the police by Amy Cooper, a White woman enraged at his request that she leash her dog. His cell phone recording of the encounter generated immediate national outcry and she faced misdemeanor charges—later dropped—for making a false report. On one level, the event is a depressingly familiar story, one of many devastatingly common incidents in which White women’s vulnerability is weaponized and wielded against Black people in public space to potentially lethal ends. It also serves as a stark reminder of the ways that racism continues to shape and structure relationships with urban park space in the United States, through practices of social control ranging from official policing and permits to informal surveillance. On another level, however, the incident also raises novel questions about what it might mean to theorize parks—as sites of refuge, recreation, protest, and surveillance—in terms of a more-than-human ethic of care and caring relations. Through a rereading of this incident, we argue for conceptualizing parks both as spaces of social control and as spaces of care, and we show how racism fundamentally shapes conflicts over caring practices and the rules that govern them.

Caregivers' perceptions of informal social control practices to reduce child neglect: A qualitative study in Ghana

BackgroundRational choice deterrence theory suggests that caregiving behavior, which includes abusive and neglectful behavior, can be influenced or manipulated via informal social control strategies enacted by neighbors, family members and friends in the social network. The literature identifies two forms of informal social control that have the potential to influence maltreating caregiver behavior, protective vs punitive, with the latter having more contrasting evidence related to its influence on maltreating caregiving practices. ObjectiveTo examine the perceptions and meanings female caregivers associate with protective and punitive informal social control strategies that have been enacted against them. Methods17 female caregivers from Ghana, who self-reported their involvement in neglectful acts, were purposively selected to engage in river of life oral history narrative interviews. Narrative accounts from the caregivers were analyzed thematically using Taguette software package. ResultsThe findings showed that protective informal social control in child neglect are interpreted via values and norms of childcare that have been institutionalized in the community. Caregivers perceived protective informal social control to have impact on their level of respect/influence, authority in the family or community, and to elicit internal consequences: shame, guilty feelings and embarrassment. Punitive informal social control approaches were considered as misplaced interventions that had ulterior motives of satisfying the neighbors' hatred/dislike of the perpetrator and quest for revenge. ConclusionThe findings suggest that the development of a fruitful theoretical framework to explain the effectiveness of informal social control should prioritize the social values and legitimate norms of the community. Implications for practice and theory development are discussed.

Secret police and practices of social control : constructing the case against non-conformist youth (Leningrad, 1964–1965)

This article traces back the practices of social control over renegade youth and the strategies of the control's legitimization based on the case study of Joseph Brodsky's affair (1964) in Leningrad. Brodsky was prosecuted as a part of a non-conformist youth milieu; his case can be interpreted as an attempt to manage, identify, and destroy the milieus of non-conformist young people. Secret police, which will be viewed as a primary agent of social control, used several strategies to destroy such undesirable youth milieus. Though formally he was accused as a social parasite, the investigators wrote their own version of Brodsky's biography in the file, considering his past and his private networks.

Between containment and crackdown in Geylang, Singapore: Urban crime control as the statecrafting of migrant exclusion

Based on a case study conducted in Geylang, Singapore, this article explores the role of urban policing, surveillance and crime control as mechanisms of social ordering that contribute to the marginalisation of excluded groups, including low-income migrant workers and sex workers. Adopting a statecraft approach that emphasises the significance of ‘governing through crime’ for the upholding of urban political-economic projects, we examine the entanglement of political discourses and crime and social control practices as co-constructive of class- and race-based inequality in Singapore. Drawing from qualitative interviews with NGO workers and sex workers, augmented by extensive non-participant observations, we identify three processes through which state power is vectored in Geylang: the stigmatisation of the neighbourhood through association with marginalised groups, legitimising intense spatialised intervention; the enacting of performative zero-tolerance policing; and the containment and surveillance of illicit activities within the neighbourhood. Contributing to discussions that advance the statecraft approach to researching urban crime control, the article shows that seemingly contradictory practices of tolerance and intervention constitute strategies of governance. The article argues that spatially specific crime control practices in Geylang generated an exclusionary ‘spectacle’ which symbolically connects low-income migrant workers with deviance, in turn supporting citizenship exclusion, racialised marginality and a wider politics of capital accumulation resting on disempowered labour. As we argue, crime control policies are an important form of statecraft legitimising an urban political economy that is heavily reliant on low-cost labour provided by migrant workers.

Perceptions, experiences and perspectives on school health and the School Health Program: the teachers’ viewpoint on the municipal health network of Belem-PA

Abstract Health at school is the subject of relevant discussions on health promotion. This study aims to understand the reach of the actions resulting from the School Health Program in municipal public schools in Belem-PA, from the perspective of teachers. It is a descriptive-observational study, with analysis of interviews with 22 teachers of municipal public basic education. Field research took place from April to June 2018. A content analysis was carried out, proposed by Bardin, generating four thematic units. Of those interviewed, 50% were unaware of the referred program or the operation of it. It was possible to perceive different modes of interaction between the program's actuators, from the most punctual and inefficient to the most contextualized and integrative. The study of social health determinants is necessary to better understand the processes and needs of these actions in the municipal school environment, with emphasis on issues of basic sanitation, food insecurity, violence and drugs. There is a need for self-recognition of the teacher as a health educator, in order to make them intrinsic health promoters in their pedagogical practices. The school's articulation with the school community can serve as an input for greater integration and stimulation of social control practices.

Amnesty of 1953 and the first experiments in the revision of social control practices in the USSR

Amnesty of 1953 and the first experiments in the revision of social control practices in the USSR

Amnesty of 1953 and the first experiments in the revision of social control practices in the USSR

Amnesty of 1953 and the first experiments in the revision of social control practices in the USSR