Social Control and Deviance

A South Asian Community in Scotland

Ali Wardak

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138716926
• eBook ISBN: 9781351768115
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This title was first published in 2000: This book provides an empirical account of social control and deviance in a South Asian community in Scotland. Focusing on Edinburgh's Pakistani community, the book examines the social order of this particular community and the ways it is maintained. It explores the various social institutions and processes that operate as mechanisms of (informal) social control within the community. This book also examines the ways the second generation South Asians relate to their community and the extent to which they conform, or deviate from its norms. Criminological social control theory is used as an analytical framework for explaining deviance. It is concluded that the South Asian youngsters (boys) who have weak / broken bonds with their community are more likely to deviate from its norms. The book further concludes that social control and deviance are intricately interrelated. While social control defines what is deviance, the latter has important implications for the former: repeated occurrence of deviance prompts agencies of social control to redefine and gradually normalize deviance.

Part One: Social Control

Introduction to Part One

This introduction examines a general intellectual history and theoretical background of the notion of social control. It will focus mainly on the contributions of macrosociology and social psychology to the general theory of social control which have dominated the debate over the subject for more than one hundred years.

Although the notion of 'social control', as a sociological concept on its own right, entered sociological theory only about the turn of the century, it had been central to the thinking of most 'Classical' social theorists, in an indirect way. Most 19th century sociologists when discussing 'social order' - the most central problem of sociology - also discussed its maintenance. These sociologists, in attempting to explain how patterns of social relationships developed and formed the whole (society), at the same time gave detailed explanations of how the whole was maintained (social control). Maine's categories of 'Status and Contract' (1861), Tonnies' 'Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft' (1887) and Durkheim's 'Mechanical and Organic Solidarity' (1984 [1893]) offer a few examples.

It was after the publication of Edward Alswarth Ross's Social Control in 1901 that the notion and concept of social control directly entered sociological theory and became one of sociology's central themes. The question that Ross endeavoured to answer was not different, in essence, from that of mainstream Classical social theory - the possibility of society and its orderly functioning. Ross (1901: 3) wondered how men and women 'are brought to live closely together and associate their efforts with that degree of harmony that we see about-us'.

For Ross this was possible through 'Social control' which he described as 'Intended social ascendancy'. 'Social ascendancy' refers to the various processes and mechanisms whereby society attains a superordinate position over the individual and moulds his/her feelings, desires and attitudes in accordance to its conventional rules and expectations, Ross (1901: 320) gave detailed descriptions of the various means of social control that he also called 'Engines of social control'. According to Ross the principal means of social control are: 'Public opinion', 'Law', 'Belief', 'Social suggestion', 'Education', 'Custom', 'Social Religion', 'Personality', 'Ideals', 'Ceremony', 'Art', 'Enlightenment', 'Illusion', 'Social evaluations', and certain 'Ethical' elements. Most of these 'Engines of social control' that are by and large externally exercised over the individual contain strong elements of coercion.

Although Ross's list indicates that coercion is only one possibility, the rest of his other 'means' of social control are also 'external' to the individual. Normative considerations, persuasion, suggestion, social and psychological manipulation and the actual use of force and coercion are all forms of 'external control': they are designed to subject the individual to society's conventional norms/rules. 'Self-control' or 'Internal control' mechanisms have only a marginal place in Ross's work. Ross concedes that social control is more effective when it is 'diffused' and takes place spontaneously from within the individual. But he does not explain how the mechanisms of 'internal control' operate.

It appears that the centraiity of 'social ascendancy' in Ross's theory of social control is based on his basic assumption about human nature. Ross (1901: 5) says that, 'It is a common delusion that order is to be explained by the person's inherited equipment for good conduct, rather than by any control that society exercised over him'. Ross implies that human nature is constituted by the individual's (selfish) complex of drives and impulses. In order to ensure a degree of harmony and order among the conflicting desires and impulses of individuals in society, the latter has to control them (mainly) externally.

In the last part of his classic work, Social Control, Ross explains that how the various 'means' in his broad list of social control mechanisms can be linked to what he refers to as a 'system of social control'. For Ross, the various means of social control complement each other. He defends the broadness of his list as sufficiently varied and elastic to suit different situations and differed social groups. Moreover, Ross asserts that this can explain the degree of social control, in terms of'more' or 'less', 'strong' or 'weak' and 'rigid' or 'elastic', in various societies.

Ross's interest in 'external control' to regulate and mould the individual's desires and feelings according to society's expectations and rules was also shared by his contemporary, the prominent sociologist William Graham Sumner. Five years after the publication of Ross's Social Control, Sumner in his famous work Folkways (1906: iii-iv) asserted that 'Folkways are habits and customs of the society, . . . Then they become regulative and imperative for succeeding generations, . . . While they are in vigour, they very largely control individual and social undertakings'. Sumner maintains that all social norms exercise coercive power over the individual and control his/her conduct. He further explains that their degree of coercion varies according to the degree of the centrality of the various forms of these norms to the orderly functioning and well-being of the community/society. For example, the relatively peripheral norms that Sumner calls 'Folkways' encounter only mild sanctions for their non-observance. But 'Mores' that are relatively more central to the well-being of community/society are enforced by more stringent sanctions when they are infringed. Finally, core societal 'values' and beliefs that are the most central for the well-being and even survival of society invoke the most severe sanctions when violated. Sumner adds that it is because of the vital importance of societal core values/beliefs for the well-being of society that most of them often become formal legal norms - laws.

Sumner, like Ross, views social control as society's regulative mechanism 'external' to the individual and largely controlling conduct from without. However, unlike Ross, Sumner argues that society's social control mechanisms are not intentionally designed to control the individual's conduct - social norms emerge naturally out of the needs of social groups for their social functioning and survival; even most legal norms, he argues, first emerge as social norms, outside the domain of the state.

Other prominent social theorists and philosophers have placed even stronger emphasis than Ross and Sumner on the regulative mechanisms of social control from without (external social control) in particular Roscoe Pound. For Pound, the individual's conduct is primarily and largely regulated by society's controls and constraints so that it suits the needs and expectations of the social order:

The pressure upon each man brought to bear by his fellowmen in order to constrain him to do his part upholding civilised society and to deter him from anti-social conduct, that is, conduct at variance with the postulates of social order.

(Pound 1942: 17-18)

Pound's use of legally orientated terminology not only implies that social control is basically legal control, but he explicitly states in his influential work, Social Control Through Law (1942:20-25) that 'In the modern world, law has become the paramount agency of social control.. Social control is primarily the function of the state.'.

Despite the fact that Pound's assertion has been criticised as an exaggeration by many legal anthropologists and sociologists of law, his work has greatly influenced modern legal theory and jurisprudence. This is not the place to go into the controversy over this subject, it is sufficient to say that social control, for Pound, is mainly 'External control'.

The works of Pound, Sumner and Ross and their emphasis on external social control mechanisms to regulate individual and social undertakings and to maintain social order have greatly influenced the modern sociology of social control. However, they failed to explain how 'External controls' were incorporated into the individual's personality; how individual conduct comes to be (to a significant extent) controlled from within through 'internal control' mechanisms. These scholars' fundamental assumptions about the superorainating role of society over the individual are criticised as 'one-sided' and deficient.

The macro sociology of social control of Ross, Sumner and Pound was particularly criticised after the popularity of the works of Charles Harton Cooley and George Herbert Mead - the two founding fathers of modem social psychology. Cooley and Mead both rejected the idea of separation between the individual and society, and therefore the 'social ascendancy' of the latter over the former. Mead profoundly shared Cooley's view (1909: 350) that 'individual and society were twin-born'. Known as 'Social inter-actionists', Cooley and Mead believed that the individual and society continuously interacted in a two-way-relationships. In the process of their social interaction the individual projects himself/herself to the surrounding social environment, affecting those in the very process of projection who, at the same time, affect him/her. The two are involved in a process of reciprocal relationships that spontaneously produces and reproduces social order and, at the same time maintains it. More importantly, this process may also involve revolt against some existing social norms. Thus, social control for Cooley and Mead does not only involve processes that both produce and maintain social order but the same processes move the vehicle of social change.

Cooley's three influential works, Human Nature and Social Order (1902), Social Organisation (1909), and Social Process (1918) emerged after Ross's Social Control (1901). In none of these three books did Cooley directly formulate a theory of social control or even much use the term. However, he indirectly addressed the question of how internalisation of society's values and norms by its individual members resulted in the maintenance of social order.

Central to Cooley's view of social control is his concept of 'Social self' to which he also referred as 'Social feelings' or the 'looking-glass self'. For Cooley the 'Looking-glass self' develops in three phases of the individual's social interaction with society: the first phase involves the individual's appearance to other persons in his/her surrounding social environment such as the family, the peer-group and, in a general vague sense, to the whole society. In the second phase the other persons judge the individual as they appear - approval or disapproval, admiration or contempt, like or dislike etc. In the third phase the individual takes on the judgements of the other persons and develops a feeling about his/her 'Looking-glass self'. It is the development of one's looking-glass or social self that places one in another person's mind, and one thus enters a state with the other which Cooley (1902:102) calls 'Communion'. Thus, living in each other's mind, so to speak, operates as a powerful mechanism of 'internal control' over the conduct of the individual in society. The most suitable social contexts for the development of Cooley's 'Social self' are what he calls 'Primary groups' individuals' familiar associations, i.e. the family, peer group, neighbourhood.

The ideal that grows up in a familiar situation may be said to be part of human nature itself. In the most general form it is that part of a moral whole or community wherein individual minds are merged and the higher capacities of the members find total and adequate expression. And it grows up because familiar associations fill our minds with imaginations of the thoughts and feelings of other members of the group, and the group as a whole, so that for many purposes, we reallv make them a part of ourselves and identify our self-feeling with them

(Cooley 1909: 23).

Thus, according to Cooley's theory, social control operates spontaneously from within the individual. He explains a social-psychological process that operates as an inexpensive but powerful mechanism of social control.

Cooley's view of social control as an internal social-psychological mechanism that operates in the process of the individual's social interaction with the society is profoundly shared by George Herbert Mead (1925; 1934). For Mead the 'self' developed in two phases of the individual's social interaction with the community/society. These two phases are identified as the T and the 'Me'. The 'Me' represents what Mead called the attitude of the 'Generalised Other' - of other persons in the community/society. The T represents the response of the individual to the attitudes of the 'Generalised Other'. 'Self emerges in the process of the 'fusion' between the T: and the 'Me' that in turn results in the entrance of the community into the individual's 'mind'. This process produces and reproduces the social order and operates as an important mechanism of social control:

It is in the form of the generalised other that the social process influences the behaviour of the individuals involved in it and carrying it on, i.e., that the community exercises control over the conduct of its individual members; for it is in this form that the social process or the community enters as a determining factor into the individual's thinking

(Mead 1934: 155)

Mead implies that the community places itself as a determining factor only in 'the individual's thinking'; it does not necessarily, determine his/her behaviour in an intended direction. That is the individual does not take the attitude of the 'generalised other' for granted. The 'reflexiveness' that the 'Me' and the T brings to the emergence of the 'self' requires that before the individual takes on the attitude of the 'Generalised Other' (the community/society), he/she examines and judges it. Then the individual's response comes as an T that is both 'object' and 'subject', at once, affected by the community, and affecting it, at the same time. Thus far from being shaped and conditioned by the attitude of the 'generalised other', the individual and the society are both actively involved in producing and in maintaining the social order. More importantly, the 'individuality' of the individual is a fundamental aspect of the process of social control, as nicely put by Mead:

Social control, so far from tending to crash out the human individual or obliterate his self-conscious individuality is, on the contrary, constitutive of and inextricably associated with that individuality; for the individual is what he is, as a conscious and individual personali...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Diagrams
• List of Tables
• Series Editor's Preface
• Acknowledgements
• General Introduction
• PART ONE: SOCIAL CONTROL
• PART TWO: DEVIANCE
• Summaries and Conclusions
• Bibliography
• Index