Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Abstract
The concept ‘social control’ has been criticised from a variety of
quarters in recent years, particularly by historians and historical
sociologists. However, it remains in common usage in sociological
studies of welfare. deviance and social control. This paper shows, first,
how this reliance on the concept of social control is rooted in a wider-
ranging argument in social and political theory concerning the liberal-
democratic fusion between the state and civil society. and that the lack
of resolution of this argument is the foundation of the persistence of the
concept social control in other areas of social inquiry, despite its
repeated ‘falsification’.Second. the paper highlights the main arguments
against the use of ‘social control’ in explaining social order, in particular
the misunderstanding of class. culture and power which its use
encourages. and the paper will conclude with a discussion of alternative
ways of conceptualising the operation of power in contemporary
societies.
2
Thepoverty of social control
3
Robert van Krieken
4
The poverty of social control
5
Robert van Krieken
6
The poverty of social control
Because the man is so bent under the weight of the idol, his face
is hardly discernible. One can see little more than the beaming
face of the idol and the hunched body of the man who is carrying
it. The power of the idol lies entirely with the man, but he does
not know it. He thinks it is an honor to carry such an important
and powerful idol. (Melossi, 1990: 185)
8
The poverty ofsocial control
9
Robert van Krieken
10
The poverty ofsocial control
11
Robert van Krieken
when state intervention was invited, even if the hosts disliked the
ultimate outcome. In cases of family violence, for example, Linda
Gordon has found that clients frequently initiated intervention;
even when the stakes were as high as losing one’s children, most
complaints came from parents or relatives mobilising their own
standards of childrearing (1986: 469). Although the Massachusetts
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children did become
known as ‘the Cruelty’, a favourite indicator of working-class fear
of state intervention (Katz, 1986: 109), this did not prevent
parents, relatives and neighbours from contacting the organisation.
As many as 60 per cent of the complaints to the MSPCC in its first
ten years came from family members, requests for help which
‘came not only from victims but also from mothers distressed that
they were not able to raise their children according to their own
standards of good parenting’ (Gordon, 1986: 472) Gordon also
argues that the process of intervention into family life by state
agencies must be seen as precisely that: a process with ambiguous
outcomes, and one in which clients actively participated, to often
have a significant impact on the final outcome (1988: 289-99).
Once one recalls that families are not homogenous units, that they
consist of power relations with weaker and stronger members, it
becomes easier to see that the impact of state intervention into
family life was frequently to modify those power relations, ‘usually
in the interest of the weaker family members’ (Gordon, 1986: 472).
Both Gordon’s work and that of Margo Horn (1984) has
demonstrated that clients often manipulated their social workers
to direct the development of their case, and a variety of historical
investigations have come to similar conclusions: David Crew
argues that the activities of the German Famifienfiirsorgeamt
between 1918 and 1933 ‘created a structured space’ within which
social workers and clients tried to affect one another . . . and
individuals and families developed ‘strategies for survival . . .
which were sometimes directly at odds with the intentions of the
social workers themselves’ (Crew, 1986: 246). Kerreen Reiger has
said the same of the Australian evidence: women clients were
‘active participants, either accepting, rejecting, or modifying the
experts’ decrees’, depending on how the advice they received
fitted with their own concerns (Reiger, 1985: 215-17).
Quite apart from the question of the responses of those directly
affected by welfare intervention, a key characteristic of the
historical sociology of welfare literature is the notion that the goals
of state intervention were and remain intrinsically alien to the
12
Thepoverty of social control
13
Robert vun Krieken
14
Thepoverty of social control
15
Robert van Krieken
16
The poverty of social control
17
Robert van Krieken
‘Power’ is always the illusion people get when they are obeyed;
thinking in terms of the diffusion model, they imagine that
others behave because of the master’s clout without ever
suspecting the many different reasons others have for obeying
and doing something else; more exactly, people who are
‘obeyed’ discover what their power is really made of when they
18
The poverty ofsocial control
start to lose it. They realise, but too late, that it was ‘made of the
wills of all the others’. (pp. 268-8)
In this sense power is not the cause of collective action, but its
consequence, or simply an aspect of it, and the causes must be
sought in something more complex, namely the collision and
combination of a constellation of projects and strategies, even if
unequally resourced and practically effective (see Callon, 1986 and
Law, 1986 for discussions of the translation model of power).
Conclusion
19
Robert van Krieken
Acknowledgments
References
20
The poverty ofsocial control
Brenzel, B.. (1983). Daughters of the State, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Burns, T.R.. (1986). 'Actors. transactions and social structure', 8-37 in Ulf
Himmelstrand (ed.). Sociology: From Crisis to Science? Vol2: The Social
Reproduction of Organization arid Culture. London: Sage.
Callon, M., (1986). 'Some elements of a sociology of translation: domestication of
the scallops and the fishermen of St Brieuc Bay', 196-232 in John Law (ed.),
Power, Action and Belief: A New Sociology of Knowledge?, London: Routledge
and Kegan Paul.
Castel, R., Castel, F. and Lovell. A , , (1982). The PsychiatricSociety, New York:
Columbia University Press.
Chunn. D. and Gavigan. S.A.M.. (1988). 'Social control: analytic tool or analytic
quagmire'?'. Contemporary Crises. 12(2) : 107-24.
Clegg, S.R., (1989). Frameworks of fower. London: Sage.
Cohen. J. and Arato. A,. (1989). 'Politics and the reconstruction of the concept of civil
society'. in A. Honneth. T. McCarthy. C. Offe. and A. Wellmer (eds),
Zwischetihetrachtutigeti: Im Prozess der A ufklarung, Frankfurt a. M. : Suhrkamp.
pp. 482-503.
Cohen. S.. (1979). 'The punitive city: notes on the dispersal of social control',
Contemporary Crises. 3: 339-63.
Cohen. S., (19%). Visions of Social Control. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Cohen. S. and Scull, A. (eds). Social Controlatid the State: Historical and
Comparative Essays. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Corrigan. P. and Leonard. P.. (1978). Social Work Practice under Capitalism.
London: Macmillan.
Crew. D.F.. (1986). 'German socialism. the state and family policy, 1918-33',
Conrinuiry arid Change. l(2) : 235-63.
Crow, G.. (1989). 'The use of the concept 'strategy' in recent sociological
literature'. Sociology. 23( I): 1-24.
Davis. J., (1984). 'A poor man's system of justice: the London police courts in the
second half of the nineteenth century'. The Historical Journal, 27(2):
Dekker. J.J.H., (1985). Struffen, redden en opvoeden: Het onstaan en de
ontwikkelitig van de residenriele heropvoeding in West-Europa. 1814-1914, met
bijzondere aandacht voor '* Nederlarische Mettray". AssenlMaastricht : Van
Gorcum.
De Swaan. A,. (1988). In Care of rhe State. Heulth Care. Education and Welfare in
Europe and the USA in the Modern Era. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Dingwall. R.. Eekelaar, J.M. and Murray, T.. (1984). 'Childhood as a social
problem: a survey of the history of legal regulation', Journal of Law and Society.
1 l(2): 207-32.
Donzelot, J.. (1979). The Policing of Families. London: Hutchinson.
Edwards. A.. (1988). Regulation arid Repression. The study of social control.
Sydney: Allen Unwin.
Evans, P.B., Rueschemeyer. D. and Skocpol. T.. (1985). Bringing the State Back
In. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Faler, P.. (1974). 'Cultural aspects of the Industrial Revolution: Lynn,
Massachusetts, Shoemakers and Industrial Morality. 1826-18W. Labor Hi.story,
IS(3): 367-94.
Foucault, M.. (1977a). 'Power and sex: an interview with Michel Foucault'. Telos.
32: 152-61.
Foucault, M., (1977b). Discipline and Punish, London: Allen Lane.
21
Robert van Krieken
22
Thepoverty of social control
Jones, G.S., (1977), 'Class expression versus social control', History Workshop, 4:
162-70.
Jones, G., (1986), Social Hygiene in Twentieth Century Britain, London: Croom
Helm.
Kaestle, C., (1983), Pillars of the Republic, New York: Hill and Wang.
Katz, M., (1978). 'Origins of the institutional state', Marxist Perspectives, l(4):
Katz, M. (1986), In the Shadow of the Poorhouse. A Social History of Welfare in
America, New York: Basic Books.
Kittrie, N . . (1971). The Right to be Different. Baltimore: John Hopkins Press.
Laqueur, T., (1976). Religion and Respectability: Sunday Schools and Working-
Class Culture 1780-1850, New Haven: Yale University Press.
Lasch. C., (1977). Haven in a Heartless World: Thefamily besieged. New York:
Basic Books.
Lasch. C.. (1980). 'Life in the therapeutic state', New York Review of Books,
27( 10). (June 12): 24-32.
Latour. B.. (1986). 'The powers of association', in J. Law (ed.), Power, Action and
Belief: A New Sociology of Knowledge?. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
pp. 264-80.
Law, J., (1986). 'On power and its tactics: a view from the sociology of science',
Sociological Review. 34( I ) : 1-38.
Lloyd, C.. (1989). 'Realism, structurism. and history: foundations for a
transformative science of society', Theory and Society. 18(4):451-94.
Luhmann, N.. (1982). The Differentiation of Society, New York: Columbia
University Press.
Macfarlane. A.. (1986). Marriage and Love in England 1300-1840, Oxford: Basil
Blackwell.
McCalman, J., (1984). Struggletown. Public and Private Life in Richmond, IW-
IY65. Melbourn: Melbourne University Press.
McGovern, C.M.. (1986). 'The myth of social control and custodial oppression:
patterns of psychiatric medicine in late nineteenth-century institutions', Journal
of Social History. 20( I ) : 3-23.
Marx, K., (1975), 'The Holy Family' [ 18451. in Collected Works, Vol. 4, London:
Lawrence and Wishart.
Marx, K. and Engels, F.. (1976). 'The German Ideology [ 18461' in Collected
Works, Vol. 5, London: Lawrence and Wishart.
Mathieson, T., (1987). 'The eagle and the sun: on panoptical systems and mass
media in modern society', in John Lowman, Robert J. Menzies and T.S. Palys
(eds), Transcarceration: Essays in the Sociology of Social Control. Aldershot:
Gower, pp. 59-75.
Matthews, J.J., (1984), Good and Mad Women. The historical construction of
femininity in twentieth century Australia, Sydney: Allen and Unwin.
Mead, G.H., (1925), 'The genesis of the self and social control', International
Journalof Ethics, 35: 251-77.
Meier, R.F.. (1982). 'Perspectives on the concept of social control', Annual Review
OfS~iociOlOg~, 8:35-55.
Melossi, D., (1990). The State of Social Control, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Merton, R.K., (1984), 'The fallacy of the latest word: the case of "pietism and
science" ',American Journal of Sociology, 89 (5): 1091-121.
Meyer, P., (1983), The Child and the State. The intervention of the state in family
life, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
23
Robert van Krieken
Minson, J., (1985). Genealogies of Morals. Nietzsche. Foucault, Donzelot and the
Eccentricity of Ethics, London: Macmillan.
Muraskin, W.A.. (1976). 'The social control theory in American history: a
critique', Journal of Social History. 9(4): 565-68.
O'Connor. J., (1973). The Fiscal Crisis of the State, New York: St Martin's Press.
Offe. C., (1984), Contradictions of the Welfare State. London: Hutchinson.
Parsons, T., (1951). TheSocialSystem. New York: Free Press.
Patton. P.. (1989). 'Taylor and Foucault on power and freedom', PoliticalStudies.
37(2): 260-76.
Peukert. D., (1986). Grenzen der Sozialdisziplinierung. Aufsteig und Krise der
deutschen Jugendfiirsorge von 1878 bis IY32, Koln: Bund Verlag.
Piven. F.F.. (1984). 'Women and the state: ideology, power and the welfare state',
Socialist Review. 14(2): 11-19,
Piven. F.F. and Cloward, R.A.. (1972). Regulatingthe Poor. Thefunctionsof
public welfare. London: Tavistock, 1972.
Platt. A,. (1977). The Child Suvers, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Reese. W.J.. (1986). Power arid the Promiseof School Reform: Crass Roots
Movements during the Progressive Eru. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Reiger. K., (1985). The Disenchantment ofthe Home, Melbourne: Oxford
University Press.
Rose. N., (1987). 'Beyond the public/private division: law. power and the family',
JournulofLawandSociety. 14(I ) : 61-76.
Ross. E.A.. (1901). Social Control. New York: Macmillan.
Schmitt. C., (1985). The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy. Cambridge, Mass.:
MIT Press.
Sieder. R.. (1986). 'Vata. derf i aufstehn?:Childhood experiences in Viennese
working-class families around 1YOO'. Continuity arid Change. I ( I ) : 53-88.
Simmel. G.. (1971). On Individuulity und Social Forms. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
Spitzer. S.. (1987). 'Security and control in capitalist societies: the fetishism of
security and the secret thereof'. in John Lowman. Robert J. Menzies and T.S.
Pal ys (eds). Transcurcerution: Essays in the Sociology of Social Control.
Aldershot: Cower, pp. 43-58.
Tholfsen. T.R.. (1976). Working Class Radicalism in Mid-Victorian England.
London: Croom Helm.
Thomas. W.I. and Znaniecki. F.. (1927). The Polish Peasantin Europeand
America, 2 vols, New York: Knopf.
Thompson, F.M.L.. (1981). 'Social control in Victorian Britain'. The Economic
History Review, 34(2): 189-208.
Thompson, F.M.L.. (1988). The Rise of Respectable Society: A Social History of
Victorian Britain, 18.~0-1YOO. London: Fontana.
Tiffin, S., (1983). 'In pursuit of reluctant parents', in Sydney Labour History
Group, (eds). What rough beast? The Stute and Social Order in Australian
History, Sydney: Allen and Unwin, pp. 130-50.
van Krieken, R.. (1986). 'Social theory and child welfare: beyond social control'.
Theory and Society, lS(3): 401-20.
van Krieken, R., (1989), 'Towards "good and useful men and women": the state
and childhood in Sydney, 1840-1890'. Australian Historical Studies. 23: 405-25.
van Krieken, R.. (1990). 'State bureaucracy and social science: child welfare in
New South Wales, 1915-1940'. Labour History, 58: 17-35.
24
The poverty of social control
Williams, R . , (1960), Culture and Society 17NO-IY50. London: Chatto and Windus.
Wimshurst, K., (1981), 'Child labour and school attendance in South Australia
1890-1915', HistoriculStudies, 19: 388-41 1.
Wrong, D . H . , (1979). Power: Its Forms, Bases and Uses, New York: Harper and
Row.
25