Ch.2 - Chriss, Social Control

1
Chapter 2

• James J. Chriss
• SOC 345/545

2
Conceptualizing Social Control

• The Runaway Bride
• Jennifer Wilbanks, Duluth, Georgia
• Got cold feet concerning her upcoming wedding and
  made up a story about being kidnapped
• Facing a range of criminal charges, Wilbanks
  checked herself into a facility for treatment
• This is how the game is played today
• Invoking illness or disease to reduce or avoid
  legal sanctions

3
The Three Forms of Control

• Egon Bittner, and three forms of legitimate
  responsive force
• Self-defense or self-help, synonymous with
  informal control
• Custodial arrangements, consistent with medical
  control
• Military or police actions, or legal control
• Over time, movement has been from informal to
  formal (legal and medical) control

4
Emergence of Norms

• Norms rules for conduct
• Content of norms derived from values broad
  evaluative standards of a culture
• Norms are the clinical application of values
• 3. How do values and norms arise in the first
  place?

5
Emergence of Norms

• William Graham Sumner (1840-1910)
• Early American sociologist, follower of Herbert
  Spencer (evolutionism)
• Published Folkways in 1906
• Values and norms are built up slowly over time,
  through social evolution
• Early human existence is brutish and guided by
  survival of the fittest
• Early humans learned of the advantages of group
  living (mutual protection)

6
Emergence of Norms

• Sumner
• In groups, human could witness what worked and
  what didnt
• Strong expectations for conduct were developed
  around these (customs or folkways)
• By tradition, the elders of the tribe were
  revered
• Ethnocentrism tendency for groups to judge
  other groups by their own folkways

7
Emergence of Norms

• Sumner
• Over time the folkways become more formalized to
  truths, or mores
• Earliest mores were taboos what ought not be
  done
• Laws are a type of more (but not all mores are
  laws)

8
Perspectives on Social Order

1. Consensus theory order reflects agreement on
   important norms and values in society
   (reinstitutionalized custom)
2. Conflict theory order maintained by dominance
   of one group over another (class, race, sex,
   etc.)
3. Interpretive theory social order is not top
   down but negotiated in social interaction case
   by case

9
Nature of Sanctions

• Sanctions punishments (negative) or rewards
  (positive)
• Individual vs. collective sanctions
• Backward-looking social control
• Centralized vs. diffuse sanctions
• Social order as a problem of collective action

10
Nature of Sanctions

• Hirschi and Gottfredsons general theory of
  sanctions (from Bentham)
• Natural stresses evolutionary learning
• Social requires participation of other human
  beings
• Legal criminal, civil, and administrative law
  and associated punishments
• Supernatural rewards or punishments received
  after death

11
Social Control as Dependent or Independent
Variable

• Traditionally social control has been
  conceptualized as a dependent variable
• Deviance gt Social control
• But social control can be conceptualized as an
  independent variable as well
• Social control gt Deviance
• 3. Labeling perspective is one of the best known
  applications of this idea.

12
The Labeling Perspective

• Primary deviance the original deviant acts
  which bring attention to the deviant
• Labeling theorists not much interested in this
  (only societal reaction)
• Secondary deviance the additional deviance that
  is produced as the result of the affixing of a
  stigmatizing label
• Makes it difficult for person to reintegrate into
  conventional society
• Explains high rates of recidivism

13
Traditional Criminology versus Labeling

• Traditional Criminology
• DEVIANCE gt SOCIAL CONTROL gt DEVIANCE
  
• Labeling
  Theory