"Social Control: Premodernity and Beyond"

Human beings are nothing but the product of society. Each individual is fundamentally impacted by the social control for which in a sense there is nothing natural of an individual. Even the idea of individuality is a formed thing which shapes the perspective and brings the change in the agencies of the social control throughout the period. The way we get to manipulate by the built rules of the society is not something natural, rather it is a constructed method that has been repeated by a multitude of generations. You are not who you think you naturally are but a constructed being who has been taught through unconscious assimilation.  Though society is a man-made institution, it has turned into a powerful entity that experiments with each individual. Each individual has to learn the way of it. An individual follows the social norms without actively thinking about it. Noam Chomsky says, "The key element of social control is the strategy of distraction that is to divert public attention from important issues and changes decided by political and economic elites, through the technique of flood or flooding continuous distractions and insignificant information."

Social control happens through some agencies of it (e.g. law, education, religion, tradition, customs, mores etc which we can see in the picture). These agencies are always there to make us learn the expected behaviour. It starts with the family. The family is the most vital agency of social control. It moulds the character of an individual. Though later on, one gets to manage many other characteristics in himself by getting in contact with the other agents of social control, and the family where newborns itself is a product of the other agencies, yet, the family is the first organization that gets the chance to have the control of an individual. We learn how to talk, how to walk, how to behave, what we should follow and what not. One learns every detail to be that oneself in the name of norms and deviance. For instance, a female child in a family gets a dolls' house or soft toys to play with; on the other hand, a male child gets a gun. This is how from the very beginning one gets controlled by a system perhaps in the name education. One learns about "right" and "wrong", and if one doesn't follow the "right" path he or she must suffer. Later on, when he gets off an age the state laws remain always there to control ones' move. If he doesn't follow the right path which means if one doesn't follow what the society wants him to follow then he must go through punishment. To enforce the conformity of the norms there are two types of sanctions- positive sanctions which is an action to reward a particular type of behaviour, and the negative sanction which refers to punishment or the threat of punishment used to ensure conformity. The more important the norm is, the more serious the negative sanction. After family one enters into school which is one of the best agents of social control. In school, we get knowledge regarding every issue that society wants us to know. And a supreme favour has been given to this knowledge for which one cannot even ignore it. The customs, traditions and mores always possess the power to influence or direct people's behaviour or the course of events. Those who follow the path of a different religion does get controlled by the religious rules. So in this world, there is no inherent self of a man but a created "self". People get controlled by public opinion, for instance, press, media, movies, radio, legislatures.

Values, belief and religion all the three are interrelated concepts. According to Durkheim, " religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices related to sacred things." Religious values are social production. It depends upon the social culture, structure and so on. Secularism is the status of a society in which the state has got no official religion and people of different religions enjoy the right of following the rituals and customs of the concerned religion without violating the rights of others. Secular outlook creates all religion on an equal footing. It accepts freedom of religion and implies freedom of worship. Secularism encourages rational thinking like all citizens have equal rights and they have their own moral and spiritual values. It has been argued that secularism is a movement toward modernization and away from traditional religious values. In political terms, secularism is a movement towards the separation of religion and government (often termed the separation of Church and state). This can refer to reducing ties between a government and the state religion replacing laws based on scripture with civil laws and a perfect democratic vibe. Lifestyle in the pre-modern world was very different from that of today. There were large families and life expectancy was very little. At the Premodern time, Europe was the world's banker and used to control all the views of the world. It was the time of suffering, mystery and a journey to an unknown path. Though it was the time of the revolution, planning and hard work and that makes the renaissance of postmodernism. They had the belief that through reason and science, we can discover true knowledge and progress to a better society. Now we live in a new era. There are no objective criteria to prove whether any theory is true. Therefore any theory claiming to have the truth about how to create a better society is a metanarrative or in a better way postmodernism. We should celebrate the diversity of views rather than seek to impose one version of the truth. Current era doesn't accept the idea of the enlightenment project (e.g. do not believe in the power of science to solve all social and environmental problems). Media produces an endless stream of images making culture and stable and fragmented. There is no longer a coherent set of shared values. Identity becomes de-established, now we can change it simply by changing our consumption patterns picking and mixing media produced images to define ourselves. Though we are facing new high consequence risks.E.g. environmental harm. Beck calls these manufactured risks as they result from technology, not nature. The growing of individualism is making the whole world reflexive. Tradition no longer governors how we act. As a result, we have to think for ourselves and reflect on the possible consequences of our choice of action. Themes of Irrationality is getting transformed by Bureaucracy. And Anarchic views are getting left behind to static views. The transition from feudalism to capitalism has also played a vital role. Two decisive events mark the Genesis of capitalism. 1. Serfdom (the abolition of all kinds of dependence) 2. The labourer must be obliged to offer for sale that very labour-power which exist only in his self living instead of selling commodities. The economic structure of capitalistic society has grown out of the economic structure of feudal society. Abolition of serfdom was the result of successful present class struggle against feudal lordship. Marx draws a clear distinction between the private property of small producers, founded upon their labour and capitalistic private property resting upon the exploitation of the labour of others.

In fine, through social control, each individual does wear lenses and that differs from person to person for which the social control agents keep getting new appearances. It is a psychological game if we consider the "Panopticon" theory of Jeremy Bentham where the prisoners always keep thinking that they are being watched by the guard who is in the tower placed in a circle of the prison cells. The game is that as the prisoners cannot see the guard, so they will never know whether they are being watched or not. Just like that panopticon theory, "Someone is always watching you," is now an established set of the attitude held by everyone.