Covers:
- what norms are (including Althusser: ISA)
- internal forms of social control (superego, tradition, socialisation, religion, upbringing)
- external forms (agencies, CJS)
- control theory (Hirshi, feminism)
AC2.1 EXPLAIN THE FORMS OF SOCIAL CONTROL
There needs to be a way to stop people from doing whatever they want, otherwise there
would be chaos, a state of anomie (normlessness).
Norms are rules and expectations that are socially enforced.
Social control refers to strategies used to prevent deviant human behaviour, to persuade
people to conform to society’s norms and values.
● Althusser: Ideological State Apparatus
→ A term to denote institutions such as education, the churches, family, media, trade
unions, and law, which were formally outside state control
→ Served to transmit the values of the state, and to maintain order in a society, above
all to reproduce capitalist relations of production.
Internal Forms
● Freud - Moral Consciousness and Superego:
→ The superego/moral conscience is developed through early socialisation, it tells us
what's right and wrong and inflicts guilty feelings for misbehaviour.
→ It stops us from acting on criminal and antisocial urges by allowing us to exercise
self-control.
→ Internalising the morals of a criminal parent leads to a weak superego.
→ Children who didn’t make the transition from id dominant to ego dominant are likely
to become criminals.
● Tradition & culture:
→ Our culture also becomes part of us through socialisation, and we accept its
values, norms and tradition as part of our identity which ensures we don’t break the
law.
→ EG: Muslim tradition of fasting during Ramadan.
→ Conforming to tradition is a way of affirming your identity and being accepted as a
member of the community.
● Internalisation of social rules & morality:
→ Socialisation - we internalise rules because we learn them from parents or wider
groups/institutions like religion, school and peer groups. Society's moral code and
rules become our personal ones, so we willingly conform to social norms.
→ We know what the right thing to do is, or what’s wrong based on our social values
e.g. not jumping a queue.
→ "Rational ideology'- term describing the way we internalise social rules and use
them to tell what's right/wrong
Other internal forms of social control:
● Religion
→ a major influence on how we behave, as we are guided by the moral codes it puts
forward for us to follow.
● Upbringing
→ especially parental authority, has a major influence on why we abide by law.
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