“Spray a bug with a toxin and it dies; spray a man, spray his brain, and he becomes an insect that clacks and vibrates about in a closed circle forever. A reflex machine, like an ant. Repeating his last instruction." (Philip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly).
The the term "social control" does not refer to any particular thing, rather it expresses a metanarrative concept dealing with all kind of social agents (e.g. family, state, educational institutions, law, neighbourhood, public opinion, propaganda and press, and economic organization)that moulds the perception of an individual. It happens in a discursive formation that hardly can be noticed. The world does not want one to question its laws. It just wants to have some soldiers who will keep on obeying the master and work accordingly. And to make those soldiers it has designed a large web with the help of its agents. Here we can quote Noam Chomsky as he says "Hundreds and billions of dollars are spent every year to control the public mind."
To begin with, the family is the root of an individual’s character formation. The perspective that we are bearing now about good and bad or right and wrong are not something divine that has come from our inside but a learned knowledge. Family teaches us the norms and values that society requires. It is a common idea that a man should be emotionless, bold, handsome, rough and tough. A man needs to be Manly and only then he will be identified as a Gentleman. There is no chance that he can be meek and mild or soft-hearted as these are the qualities that a girl need to possess to be a Lady. By any chance, if any man possesses ladylike qualities and vice versa then he is not a proper man or she is not a proper woman. So the structured gender roles are the
social rules that we are internalizing from the very beginning.
Travis Hirschi, the criminologist who has developed the social control theory in 1969 identified four types of social bonds that connect people to the society. The bonds that he talked about are
attachment, commitment, involvement and belief. These bonds are for encouraging people not to break the law or in other words not to do according to one's own will. If one of these four bonds break down by someone, Hirschihypothesizes that the person is participating in criminal activities. The world fools us to hold the belief that we do have our free will; one can make his own choice; but no, there is none. Everything is fixed here. Even the options that we get are the fixed schemes that keep us in a delusion that we are making our choices. For instance, many do not want to work every day and go to the office but he must. One cannot just attend his office whenever he wants to and whenever he does not. Whether he wishes or not, it does not matter. He must follow the rules and regulations of the office to get remained in that job which can provide him happiness meaning money, shelter, food, clothing, etc. Besides, one can never be happy because happiness is not beneficial for the economy. Rather, the term happiness is just a delusional trap which has no meaning. Just as MattHaig says in his book "The world is increasingly designed to depress us. Happiness isn’t very good for the economy. If we were happy with what we had, why would we need more? How do you sell an anti-ageing moisturizer? You make someone worry about ageing. How do you get people to vote for a political party? You make them worry about immigration. How do you get them to buy
insurance? By making them worry about everything. How do you get them to have plastic surgery? By highlighting their physical flaws. How do you get them to watch a TV show? By making them worry about missing out. How do you get them to buy a new smartphone? By making them feel like they are being left behind. To be calm becomes a kind of revolutionary act. To be happy with your non-upgraded existence. To be comfortable with our messy, human selves, would not be good for business."
People are just like machines running programs. They do not know who they are or where they are and why they are. They accept what they have been told and believe it to be "right" because cannot see out of the box. And part of the way is shaped is through the hegemony of thought and ideas. The underlying metaphysical assumptions that people think are unquestionable. Adam Levin refers “Most people, Gurion, most people do not violate boundaries, do not defy governance, and most of them come out intact, whereas very few of those who act lawlessly do. And that is why school is so much about following rules. You are here, above all else, to learn to live lawfully for the rest of your life. You are here to learn how to exist in cages without acting as if they are cages, to live like menschen despite being locked in cages. You are here to learn to survive in the world. That is the most basic purpose of our educational system, and it is a high purpose.”
During the period of the modern past to modern present, the changing values and beliefs of different ideologies are very visible. The religious ideology has turned to secularism, feudalism to capitalism, Irrationality to Bureaucratization, anarchic to static and so on. Feminism is a radical notion that women are people. But today there is a myriad of ways to see feminism and it would depend on who you ask, what country they are in, what language they speak, what religion they follow and what culture they are from. Social control is based on all means and methods to induce a person to conform to the expectation of a group or society. This system attempts to achieve social order. According to E.A. Ross, the individual has deep-rooted sentiments that helped him to co-operate with other fellow members to work for social welfare. These sentiments are sympathy, sociability and a sense of Justice. But they sentiments by themselves are not enough to suppress the self-seeking impulses of the individual. John H. Gillinrefers, "Social control is a system of measures, suggestions, persuasion, restrain and coercion by whatever means including physical force by which society brings into conformity to the approved pattern of behaviour a subgroup or by which a group moulds into conformity it's members."
If we categorize the means of social control then we may find some formal means (e.g: law, education, Coercion) of social control and some informal means (e.g: belief, religion, Folkways, art and culture, mores, customs, public opinion) of social control. Do we need the law enforcement of the government? This is a trickier question than one might think. Even an anarchist might be fully aware of how most people tend to behave. Law should be unnecessary. But because of how so many behave and how many do not know how to conduct themselves that is why there is the law. “Law is the body rules enacted by legally authorized bodies and enforced by authorized agencies." Then educational is an experiment. It is a process of socialization. Michel Foucault says, "Schools serve the same functions as prisons and mental institutions to define, classify, control, and regulate people." Knowledge has become some kind of omnipotent aspect by the educational institutions. A child believes anything that is written on the books. Thus the innocence of an individual gradually turns to ignorance when he is grown up as a product of the society. He gets to learn some fixed definition of right and wrong. Education reforms the wrong attitudes of child and corrects the belief and prejudice. It builds a gaze in him. Thus the experiment of the society becomes successful. Coercion is the use of power to achieve the desired result. It may be physical or non-violent. physical coercion is the cheapest form of social control. On the other hand, non-violent coercion means strike of students for something achievement or a group of people want their legal right before any unauthorized practice of law. Ultimate means of social control while other means fail. Even It could be Physical coercion, bodily injury, imprisonment and Death Penalty.
If we go for informal means of social control, what comes first in our mind is the belief. Typical and habitual beliefs, attitudes and styles of conduct observed with a group of community. Means a conviction that particular thing is right. For example, Monarchy is the best state system when a child learns it from a family or a student learns it from school. Then it became difficult to tell him the good side of the other state system. It is this belief that works best in him that monarchy is the best. Mores are the customs and group routines which are thought by the members of the society to be necessary to the groups continued existence. When we talk about customs on social control. Most of us follow their traditional habits and norms of society. suppose, a man sneezes and his counterman says 'God bless you'. And it's quite natural for others. Because we have been using this social style for ages. It is accepted by society and followed because it was followed in the past. A France sociologist Emil Durkheim said 'religion provides social cohesion and social control to maintain society in social solidarity ' Suppose, a child is born into a particular religion. Even if he wants to, he cannot easily accept other scriptures. This further prolongs the long years of control of society. Literary and artistic work is called the mirror of social life. When a singer and writer showcase their artwork to the public, ultimately society, it reflects on the human mind and what comes to in imagination, wants to make that real. So A Popular writer or singer can make a huge impact on billions of people in society. We are more afraid to do anything than to have someone say something against me.
The the aftermath of those social controls might turn out positively or negatively. In the case of positive social control rewards, the policy of appreciation is used for keeping the person under control. As a result of these steps, human being tries to behave in the best possible manner
in society. In the case of negative social control, an individual with the fear of punishment is made to behave in conformity with the values of the society. Social control doesn't influence where influence may be exerted through public opinion, coercion, social suggestion, religion or any other method. The influence is exerted by the society which means that the group is better able to exercise influence over the individual than a single individual. This group
maybe the Family, Church or Union etc. The influence is exercised for promoting the welfare of the group as a whole. The person is influenced to actin the interest of others rather than by his interest. social control is exercised for some specific end in view. The aim is always the welfare of the whole, the individual is made conscious of others existence and their interests.
"You no longer watch TV, it is the TV that watches you (life),” or again: “You are no longer listening to Don’t Panic, it is Don’t The panic that is listened to you”—a switch from the panoptic mechanism of surveillance (Discipline and Punish [Surveiller et punir]) to a system of
deterrence, in which the distinction between the passive and the active is abolished. There is no longer any imperative of submission to the model, or gaze “YOU are the model!” “YOU are the majority!” Such is the watershed of a hyperreal sociality, in which the real is confused with the model, as in the statistical operation, or with the medium. …Such is the last stage of the social relation, ours, which is no longer one of persuasion (the classical age of propaganda, of ideology, of publicity, etc.) but one of deterrence: “You are Information, you are social, you are the event, you are involved, you have the word, etc.” An about-face through which it becomes impossible to locate one an instance of the model, of power, of the gaze, of the medium itself, because you are always already on the other side."
Works Cited:
Bennet, et al. Leading with the Future in Mind: Knowledge and
Emergent Leadership. Mountain
Quest Institute, 2019.
Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. Semiotext(e), 1981.
Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Penguin Books Limited, 2019.
Haig, Matt. Reasons to Stay Alive. Penguin Publishing
Group, 2016.
K, Philip, Dick. A Scanner Darkly. 1977
Wolf, Naomi. The Beauty Myth. Chatto and Windus,
1990.
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