Societal Control Research Articles

A Proposal for a System for Societal Control in the National Audit Office of Colombia

This paper presents a project of the National Audit Office of Colombia (Contraloria General de la Republica; CGR) to experiment with possibilities of societal control systems as a fundamental element to implement mechanisms to control the activities of State agencies. The paper describes the activities initiated to develop an experiment in a particular locality, the municipality of Sahagun in the Department of Cordoba. We also try to expound historical circumstances and background related to participatory schemes in Colombian society, as well as attempts made by the State to address these issues.

"Say That I Had a Lovely Face": The Grimms' "Rapunzel," Tennyson's "Lady of Shalott," and Atwood's Lady Oracle

This essay examines three works, the Grimms’ “Rapunzel” (1812), Tennyson’s “Lady of Shalott” (1832), and Atwood’s Lady Oracle (1976), for the damsel-in-distress trope and the dual contexts in which the societal control of women and their bodies are predominate. The essay draws parallels between Lady Oracle’s female protagonist, Joan, the Lady of Shalott, and Rapunzel. They are all women trapped in a tower—sometimes a literal tower, sometimes a pseudo-tower in the form of a maternal figure, and sometimes both. The tower is a contradictory structure; it provides shelter and safety for the woman, but it also traps her and symbolically represents her societal domestic destiny. For Joan, her own body is also a tower. Her weight, heavier than society’s standards mandate acceptable for a woman, is a mode of defense against her mother and also rebellion against society. Her obesity has so far kept her safe from the perils of femininity, as she sees it. This essay examines imagery in both fairy tales and Victorian literature surrounding the “fallen woman” to explore how a woman can escape her tower without losing herself.

Reality Negotiation: Governing One's Self and Being Governed by Others

Self-theories are posited along 2 related cognitive dimensions. First, the valence of an act varies from negative to positive. Second, the linkage to an act reflects the degree (ranging from none to high) to which one is perceived as being the causal agent for that act. Plotting these 2 dimensions, with valence reflecting the ordinate (negative at the bottom to positive at the top) and linkage reflecting the abscissa (no linkage at the left to high linkage at the right), most people have a positive self-theory regression line linking themselves most strongly to positive valence acts. A minority, however, have negative self-theories showing decreasing linkage to positive valence acts. Reality negotiation strategies are psychological mechanisms used to preserve self-theories when confronted with theory-discrepant information. These strategies are detailed, and it is shown how they ultimately foster societal control over the person.

Society's interaction with the water cycle: a conceptual framework for a more holistic approach

This paper takes as its starting point today's paradoxical situation where a global water crisis is threatening a world in which water illiteracy is widespread among those expected to cope with that crisis. This creates a huge communication challenge for hydrologists, having to brief decision makers, diplomats and politicians in a manner that is simplistic without being water-reductionistic. The paper proposes some simple explanatory models, to be used for explaining and visualizing fundamental man/water interactions. It also discusses environmental sustainability criteria and their consequences in terms of the capacity to support water dependent populations. Large stress is put on land/water interactions. The paper ends with a conceptual framework based on the water cycle, distinguishing between rural and urban water use, water structures for mobilizing water for such uses, side effects, and key points for societal control mechanisms.

Democratic control of technological risks in developing countries

With their rapid post-World War II industrialization, developing countries face unprecedented proliferation of technological risks and environmental hazards. These risks must be controlled to prevent these countries from ending up as dumping grounds for highly risky, hazardous, and environmentally destructive technologies. Democratic economic, political, and cultural mechanisms that serve to maintain societal control over technological risks in advanced industrialized countries are simply not developed enough in most developing countries to stop the proliferation of technological risks. The Bhopal disaster is used to exemplify the many limitations of developing nations in technological risk control. This paper advocates a “grass roots social learning” approach to improving democratic community control over technological risks. In this approach the public learns to assess and control risk decisions directly from other communities that have experienced similar risks. It also involves simultaneous building up of democratic economic, political, and cultural institutions.

To distort the market: The role of society in Chinese modernization

Market distortions are generally caused by the state or social institutions. This paper discusses the social distortions of the Chinese market through examining a “Chinese style” labor market-the community-based labor markets. Along with the now standard argument emphasizing the role of the state, this paper concludes that the “right kind” of societal distortions or control of the market have been crucial to the phenomenal success of the Chinese marketization and the seemingly puzzling political and social stability in that country. Besides contending for the general “necessity” of market distortions, this paper calls for further studies on the significant role of social institutions in contemporary China.

Pesticide residue concerns and shopping location likelihood

Pesticide residues are one component of the larger food safety issue. Levels of pesticide residue concern are increased by concerns not only with perceived risks associated with conventional produce, but also with issues such as safety, nutritional value, environmental effects, and need for increased societal control of the food supply. Concern for pesticide residues and importance of healthfulness in the food purchase decision resulted in increases in the probability that consumers would shop at a supermarket that offered pesticide-residue free produce, even at higher prices. However, price had a significantly negative effect on the probability and price is usually a sensitive issue with most supermarkets. ©1994 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Défis, savoirs, décisions dans le concept du développement durable

This work explores challenges to sustainable development, identifies various currents of thought in the social sciences that are of potential relevance in the search for strategies to achieve sustainable development, and offers some reflections on the decision processes involved in selecting development strategies. 4 major challenges to sustainable development are identified. In the 1st place, the fundamental equilibrium of the exosphere is menaced by the expansion of industrial activity, with major ecological problem that of nonrecyclable waste which pollute the ecosystem. The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is 1 example. The irreversibility of some effects of human activity is becoming clearer with time. A 2nd challenge is the arising from the intrinsic risks of scientific and technological development. The examples of nuclear energy and genetic manipulation demonstrate the dangers and ethical problems of allowing technological progress to occur without adequate societal control. A 3rd challenge is that of mastery of the organization and use of knowledge so that technological progress can be marshalled to reduce poverty and inequality. The 4th challenge is that of demographic growth, which accentuates poverty and inequality and aggravates pressure on resources. 3 recent currents of thought in the social sciences, all stressing interdisciplinarity, may contribute to understanding the long term modifications needed for achieving sustainable development. Among systemic approached, the thermodynamic theory of economic processes attempts to take into account the irreversible character of expenditures of energy and raw materials, while other theories examine the complexity of system interactions and the limitations of a purely quantitative approach. Decision theory may become an essential component of reflection on technological choices because of its demonstration that the criteria of rational choice differ in the cases of risk and of uncertainty. This type of analysis has been applied to energy choices. Proponents of an overall development theory consider that analysis and action to meet the challenges to sustainable development must be undertaken for all simultaneously. Protection of the environment, elimination of poverty, fertility control, and socioethical problems related to new technologies are different facets of the reality of a universal development crisis. The systemic approaches and decision theory all agree on the need for integrated solutions. Development choices cannot be left either to science or to technological dynamics in the context of an economy left to itself. Existing information on long term effects of development decisions is scarce and often hidden away in the files of organizations or governments; it needs to be widely available so that optimal decisions can be made and policies set.

Palace of Desire

The sensual and provocative second volume in the Cairo Trilogy, Palace Of Desire follows the Al Jawad family into the awakening world of the 1920's and the sometimes violent clash between Islamic ideals, personal dreams and modern realities. Having given up his vices after his son's death, ageing patriarch Al-Sayyid Ahmad pursues an arousing lute-player - only to find she has married his eldest son. His rebellious children struggle to move beyond his domination as they test the loosening reins of societal and parental control. And Ahmad's youngest son, in an unforgettable portrayal of unrequited love, ardently courts the sophisticated daughter of a rich Europeanised family.

Mobilizing Law in Response to Collective Problems: A Test of Black's Theory of Law

Donald Black's theory of law states that the quantity of law can be explained in terms of stratification, morphology, culture, organization, and social control. Empirical tests of this theory have produced disparate findings. For the most part, previous tests have focused on criminal law and on the use of law to deal with personal problems. In the present study, survey data are used to test the effect of stratification, morphology, culture, organization, and social control on the willingness of people to mobilize law in response to various neighborhood problems. The only strong and consistent finding is that other social control is positively associated with mobilization of law while Black's theory predicts a negative association. We suggest a distinction between societal and personal social control to explain the pattern of results.

Judgment and hazard adaptation: A longitudinal study of responses to the risks of water contamination

It is commonly assumed that risk judgments precede the taking of hazard adaptation actions such as information seeking. The present study examines this and the related assumption that information seeking leads to greater hazard mitigation knowledge using a longitudinal research design. The study focuses on judgments and actions related to an environmental hazard, water contamination, which posed an imminent danger to study participants. Three sets of judgments, suggested by prior research, were studied. Information seekers were found to be more knowledgeable about steps that could be taken to reduce the risks of the hazard. Efforts to seek out hazard information were preceded by high judgments of personal concern and low judgment of trust that technical experts can solve hazard problems. Contrary to expectations, information seeking was also preceded by low judgments that the hazard might cause personal illness. The results indicate that assessments of personal and societal control motivate information seeking and that the relationship of risk judgments to hazard adaptation behavior may be dynamically interactive.

Expertise and Professional Standards

Although professional expertise is generally considered to be a key attribute of any profession, little analysis of it has been directly undertaken. Using a model that distinguishes the kinds of uncertainty faced by the profession from those faced by individual practitioners, this study suggests how uncertainty is absorbed through professionalization and managed by practitioners through the use of professional standards. Examination of this use reveals the professional contradictions in expertise between individual virtualities and collective science; the dilemmas that standards produce by permitting the democratization of expertise yet enabling the proletarianization of professionals; and how standards may be used by outsiders to analyze and evaluate directly a profession's expertise, thereby facilitating a measure of societal control over seemingly autonomously generated knowledge.

PREPROCESSING AND SOCIETAL CONTROL: NEGLECTED COMPONENT OF SOCIOCYBERNETICS

Recent doubts about whether social systems can be controlled in a cybernetic sense depend upon a view of cybernetics that overemphasizes communication, information processing and feedback at the expense of what computer scientists call preprocessing: the conscious selection and structuring of information to facilitate its processing. Much as rationalization was a complement to bureaucratic control in Max Weber's time, the preprocessing of information, prior to its processing by computer, serves societal control today. Indeed, phenomena like rationalization and symbolization can be viewed as forms of preprocessing; they facilitate the crucial control function of self‐referencing. US census data show a monotonic increase in the percentage of the work force engaged in preprocessing relative to the other informational activities: synthesizing, programming and processing.

The Court of Last Resort: Mental Illness and the Law.

The Court of Last Resort looks at decision making in a mental-health court and at the dilemmas of treating mental illness while protecting patients' legal rights. Carol Warren spent seven years studying hearings in a large California court where people who had been involuntarily committed to institutions for psychiatric treatment could petition for their release. In this book she confronts questions of whether mental illness is real or only a label for societal control, whether the government should be involved in committing the deviant to institutions, and how the interaction of judges, psychiatrists, families, police, and other individuals and agencies affect the court's administration of mental-health law. Though the cases in this book fall under California's Lanterman-Petris-Short Act, Warren's analysis of conflicts between legal and medical models of behavior is of national and international importance both to sociologists and to the many professionals who work at the juncture of mental health and the law.

Societal Control of Producer Marketing Boards

Producer marketing boards in Canada and Israel are used as substitutes/adjuncts to market mechanisms in regulating the production and sale of agricultural commodities. Producer dominance of agencies regulating marketing boards results in a lack of societal control over their use of wide ranging monopoly powers. Changes in board membership and increased public accountability may lead to improved societal control.

Locus of Control Measures among American Indians

To study locus of control (LOC) with American Indians, LOC scales were administered to 740 American Indian adults at five sites. Responses were analyzed by factor analysis and hierarchical cluster analysis. Both analyses substantiate previous findings with Blacks of a separation of personal control- the control an individual has in his own life-from ideological control, a generalized societal control that people in general possess. Clusters obtained with American Indians relate to trust, personal control, race ideology, ideological control, and a residual fate ideology.

Grass-roots Organizations, Societal Control and Dissolution of Norms

In recent times two trends have emerged in society. an increase in state control and collective consumption and a dissolution of traditional norms and values. These processes have led to the formation of various types of grass-roots organizations: single issue organizations, rural community organ izations, urban community organizations. organizations of oppressed cat egories and idealistic organizations A Danish survey of some 100 organ izations from three municipalities shows differences between structure, resources and activities of the organizations, and indicates how the processes mentioned have created the five types of grass-roots organizations The conclusion is that only organizations stressing new norms and alternative social institutions may create any long term changes.

Scale, protectionism and European integration: the structural dynamics of strategic control in a turbulent field

The first half of the paper introduces concepts useful in the application of O.R. to strategic problems. ‘Structural dynamics’ concerns the lead times for strategic adaptation, the planning horizons implied and the ‘instrumental’ approach to maintaining adaptive capability. ‘Strategic monitoring’ is required for long cycle societal learning and control. Models of the causal texture of the environment have been developed by Emery and Trist, including particularly, the ‘turbulent field’. These concepts are applied in the second half of the paper to the resolution of two contemporary issues in European integration: economic expansion to maintain employment, and problems of polarisation and regional imbalance. The deficiencies of the liberal free trade model are discussed, particularly its neglect of the effect of cumulative dynamic economies of scale. The re-adoption is advocated of national control over aggregate inward trade flow, as a means of resolving the ‘convicts’ dilemma' situation of tightly inter-connected and interdependent national economies. The recommendations are related to neo-functionalist theories of political structure, the intention being not to criticise the concept of the European Communities, but to suggest that more analytic and strategic consideration be given to the location of functional responsibilities— including those for economic management-at appropriate level within the system.

Behaviorism: part of the problem or part of the solution.

The form frequently taken by behavior-modification programs is analyzed in terms of the parent science, Behaviorism. Whereas Behaviorism assumes that behavior is the result of contingencies, and that lasting behavior change involves changing the contingencies that give rise to and support the behavior, most behavior-modification programs merely arrange special contingencies in a special environment to eliminate the "problem" behavior. Even when the problem behavior is as widespread as alcoholism and crime, behavior modifiers focus on "fixing" the alcoholic and the criminal, not on changing the societal contingencies that prevail outside the therapeutic environment and continue to produce alcoholics and criminals. The contingencies that shape this method of dealing with behavioral problems are also analyzed, and this analysis leads to a criticism of the current social structure as a behavior control system. Although applied behaviorists have frequently focused on fixing individuals, the science of Behaviorism provides the means to analyze the structures, the system, and the forms of societal control that produce the "problems".

Democratic Telesis and County Agricultural Planning

A GRICULTURAL planning, since the Mount Weather Conference, seems likely to become the broadest attempt at rational societal control the United States has witnessed. Unlike the National Resources Planning Board, and even the NRA, the new program is not limited to control and direction of development within a single institutional framework. Agricultural planning is unquestionably conceived, in its ultimate design, to develop an American rural structure, not merely rural economic reform.' Obviously the efforts of planners have not been expended widely, as yet, on non-economic issues. At the present time, planning may be described largely by its increasingly less popular title land use planning. This being the case, the sociologist might well clarify his role in present planning as well as in reference to projected institutional reforms. It seems quite sterile to insist that the role of rural sociology is simply the application of its stereotyped tools of community analysis and location, in the blind faith that the resulting social facts might hold value for planners. The sociological problems actually arising from the planning movement are much too significant to be shunted off in favor of the eternal urge to draw community boundaries, and gather virtually random social facts. In the following discussion three types of problems emanating from the agricultural planning movement are discussed. These are believed to hold direct relevence to the successful operation of the