Techniques Of Social Control Research Articles

Seen but unseen: Part-time faculty and institutional surveillance and control

This article examines surveillance techniques utilized by several metropolitan community colleges to manage part-time faculty. We find that with the increased use of part-time faculty, administrators at these organizations are relying less on direct, personal supervision of these instructors and are instead using more “remote” surveillance practices to certify that “acceptable educational standards” are being maintained. The use of these practices not only signals a decline in the professional status of college instructors, but also points to differences in social control techniques used in “productive” institutions versus those used in “disciplinary” institutions. We find that while surveillance techniques employed at these community colleges make the education process visible and controllable, they simultaneously render part-time faculty invisible but controlled.

Rights & Discipline: Competing Modes of Social Control in the Fight over Employee Drug Testing

Conflicts over employee drug testing programs involve competing claims about the appropriate organization of social control policy. These disputes are related to the coexistence of competing discourses of social control: (1) a juridical discourse of crime and punishment, which emphasizes citizen rights that limit state surveillance, and (2) a disciplinary orientation that strives to prevent and eliminate crime through sustained surveillance and control. The author reviews recent Supreme Court drug testing decisions and argues that the Court adopts the second perspective and supports social control techniques that are antithetical to key elements of liberal legal ideology.

Discipline and Punish: Some Notes on the Margin

Abstract: This paper re‐analyses a debate between Cohen and Bottoms over the alleged growth of the ‘disciplinary society’. It then takes as a test case empirical evidence concerning a new technique of social control used by social workers, namely the use of ‘contracts' in welfare interventions, especially with parents suspected of maltreating their children. It argues that this form of social control illustrates the limitations of the analytical framework used by both Cohen and Bottoms and suggests that a characteristic of modern control techniques may be the way they fuse together disciplinary and juridical elements.

Moral and Policy Influences On the Police

The purpose of this paper is to develop a prima facie case for the argument that (a) in the future, police operational procedures and their posture towards techniques of social control will be heavily influenced by the hermeneutic paradigm of policy analysis and policymaking; (b) the hermeneutical paradigm in contrast to the current and dominant utilitarian-positivist paradigm, will facilitate and move policy analysis towards a more acceptable definition of democracy; and (c) the currently evolving hermeneutical paradigm is legitimated by the moral and epistemological considerations of three early American pragmatists: Dewey, James and Mead.

Education for Social Control of Drug Use

The effectiveness of social controls in regulating use of legally proscribed drugs is curtailed by the fact that social institutions cannot legitimately enter into the dynamics of controlling use—they can only function to proscribe such use. An analysis of the potential for educational organizations to foster the development of social control techniques is outlined.

Wit and Humor: A Neglected Aid in Crowd and Mob Control

This paper presents background information and theories which suggest the use of humor to reduce tensions between control forces (notably the police) and the masses during demonstrations, marches, and other crowd actions. Because the basic responsibility for preserving order belongs to the police, this paper presumes that most planned attempts at humor to reduce tension will be theirs. No attempt has been made to relate the use of humor to the rightness or wrongness of the primary issues in a demonstration since the only type of humor effective in crowd control is irrele vant to the primary issue and directed at preventing and control ling secondary antagonisms. Humor as a technique of social control is only likely to help when the objective of the control forces is to preserve the peace and to discharge duties with a minimum of unnecessary antagonsim. Humor should not and probably could not becloud the primary issues of a confronta tion. Guidelines for the use of humor are proposed.

The Better America Federation: A Case Study of Superpatriotism

FOUNDED in May, 1920, at Los Angeles, the Better America Federation was one of the superpatriotic societies which sprang up during the Red Scare following the First World War. Though it confined its activities to the state of California, the federation was noteworthy because of its large size, systematic organization, and ample financial backing. At the height of its influence in 1920 and 1921, the Better America Federation flooded the state with its propaganda and its speakers, lobbied vigorously at the state legislature, and crusaded against whatever it considered un-American. More important than its local influence, the Better America Federation provides an excellent opportunity to examine the historical origins and inner mechanics of postwar superpatriotism. Was the Red Scare caused by the war and the Russian Revolution, or was it a logical consequence of three decades or more of domestic political debate and social strife? Was it produced by external events impinging on American society, or was it an integral phase in the dynamics of American social development? The case of the Better America Federation serves to emphasize the importance of domestic forces of long standing in producing the upsurgence of superpatriotism which characterized the years immediately following the First World War. The Better America Federation was conditioned by the war chiefly in the area of methods. The federation represented an attempt to continue in peacetime certain techniques of social control that had been perfected during wartime. Its campaigns for members and money employed the same sort of patriotic appeal which had been used to sell Liberty Bonds. Indeed, the federation tried to recruit the former bond-sellers. The first membership drive of the newly formed Better America Federation was begun at a banquet to honor those individuals who had made the local Liberty Bond campaign a success.' The federation wished to continue the forcible suppression of radicals which had been a notable feature of the war effort. As a step in this direction, the federation provided financial support for three witnesses-two of them ex-convicts-

Empiricism and the Social Sciences

different moral purposes, for changing or maintaining the status quo.20 An s-f analysis consists of statements about the relationships between or among two or more structural components of a social system. Any such statement can be viewed in at least two regards. First, it can be viewed as a valid or invalid scientific statement, in the measure that it describes parts and connections of the social system as they objectively exist. Secondly, such a statement can be viewed as having ideological consequences, in the measure that someone with a certain set of goals or values may use it to justify maintaining or changing the objectively existing parts and connections. These two aspects of any statement should not be confused. An s-f analysis which consists of scientific statements should not be taken gratuitously to imply any ideological commitment, either to maintain or change the existing system. Because a statement may have ideological as well as scientific reference does not necessarily mean that there is actually any ideological intent whatsoever on the part of its author. problem of the ideological uses of knowledge is a generic one and applies to all social science, to any method of analysis or system of theory in social science. problem is not peculiar to s-f analysis. Of course, s-f analysis is no more free than any other system of social scientific theory from the responsibility for keeping alert to the possible ideological uses to which its statements may be put. At the least, perhaps, s-f analysis, as well as other kinds of sociological analysis, might forestall the charge of being ideologically biased by pointing out the several alternative practical and ideological uses to which a piece of knowledge can be put.21 20 For an excellently stated but misguided charge that practically all of contemporary social science is interested simply in discovering techniques of social control by which men can be adjusted to the status quo, see Wayne Hield, The Study of Change in Social Science, British Journal of Sociology, 5 (March, 1954), pp. 1-11. Hield devotes most of his criticism to Parsons, Merton, and s-f analysis, but he also includes such various people and areas as Elton Mayo, Lewin, Moreno, interracial housing studies, content analysis, Warner, Homans, Tolman, Murray, and Kretch and Crutchfield. 21 However, this may not always be possible. For further discussion of this and other problems of the social responsibilities of science, see Bernard Barber, Science and Social Order, Glencoe, Illinois: Free Press, 1952, pp. 225-232.

Social Controls in the Race Relations Pattern of a Small New England Town

W H HAT are the means of controlling and perpetuating a race relations pattern? What are the processes and techniques of social control as they operate to keep Negroes place? It was previously pointed that many of the obvious formal and institutionalized informal means of control have been extensively investigated in the South, in some large northern cities, and on a nationwide basis.' In the North we do not find for the most part the thinly veiled threat of violence against Negroes for getting out of place. On the contrary, legally they have equal status, and the spoken values of the dominant white population emphasize equality. Nevertheless, Negroes do stay places, and we must ask: what is their and what keeps them there? This study investigates these questions in a small New England town by means of a field study. One further note should be mentioned at this time. In any situation of separation between racial, religious, or nationality groups such as exists in the United States, there is a place for both the dominant and the subordinate group. The white has to learn as does the Negro, and controls operate in both cases. For purposes of simplification, however, this study has stressed the maintenance of the Negro's ''place. The concept of social control generally seems inadequate, at least in regard to the interracial situation, for most authorities in this specific field2 seem to have neglected two important aspects. In effect, they define the white techniques for keeping the Negro his place, but they do not carry the concept of social control far enough. Two conceptual modifications of the theory of social control appear to be necessary. First, the theory assumes the influence of human agents but neglects the effect of such impersonal factors as different cultural and regional backgrounds, different behavior patterns, differences in living conditions and relative numbers, and so forth. Secondly, while the theory mentions the control a group exercises over its own members, it does so only in passing; the main emphasis seems to be on the controls emanating from the dominant group. The possibility of self-imposed control by the subordinate group is largely ignored. To be sure, some social psychologists have stressed the conditioning of the individual, but conditioning on a group basis has been largely overlooked. For purposes of this study, therefore, social control consists of the pressures exerted on groups or individuals by impersonal forces as well as by others or themselves, all of which make for conformity to the established rules and social norms. It is further the sum total of techniques, mechanisms, rules, sanctions, folkways, mores, and processes whereby a community or society

Food Rationing and Morale

A RATIONING system manifests the typical characteristics of a social invention. While food rationing did not originate in the last war, the most definite development in modern times occurred then in European nations. In the United States we are now putting together a rationing system out of elements indigenous to our own culture and on the basis of European models. The inventive process is tentative, and we are not wholly conscious of what the ramifications may be. When rationing spreads throughout a society, a new stateway is emerging. Fundamental cultural attitudes regarding the appropriate methods of distributing goods are being revised. New modes of cooperation, voluntary or enforced, and new techniques of social control are being tested. The foundations of group morale during crises are laid bare. Rationing is urgent in its motivation and widely ramifying in its effects; it deserves to be called a major social invention. In both structure and functioning a rationing system has its sociological no less than its economic elements. The operation of a rationing system provides crucial ex-

Leadership and Education

Abstract In a previous article entitled, “Social Trends and Education” the writer pointed out that some clearly discernible social trends were setting increasingly important problems for the schools that were being given little attention. I n that discussion, one item was omitted because of space considerations, namely the growing trend toward the interdependence of all social and economic groups in our society. This trend seems to the writer to involve developing new techniques of social control in harmony with our democratic principles. The failure to recognize the implications of this trend and uneasiness on the part of some over the changes that perforce it is bringing about, seem to result in threats to our society which for several reasons leaders in and out of education are dodging. This raises the question as to the type of leadership called for, the education they should have and the goals toward which they may be expected to head. This article attempts briefly to discuss these matters.