Social Control: Informal, Legal and Medical: Volume 15

Cover of Social Control: Informal, Legal and Medical
Subject:

Table of contents

(14 chapters)

Back in 2005 lawyers for the Milwaukee school board decided to exclude Viagra and similar erectile dysfunction (ED) drugs from health coverage for the teachers’ union because, well, they were simply too expensive.1 And besides, so the school board explained, such drugs are used primarily for recreational sex and are not a medical necessity.

The concept of state-corporate crime developed during the late 1980s and early 1990s in a series of papers authored by Michalowski and Kramer (Kramer, 1990; Kramer & Michalowski, 1990; Michalowski & Kramer, 1987). They specifically define state-corporate crime as:Illegal or socially injurious actions that result from a mutually reinforcing interaction between (1) policies and/or practices in pursuit of goals of one or more institutions of political governance and (2) policies and/or practices in pursuit of goals of one or more institutions of economic production and distribution. (Michalowski & Kramer, 2006a, 2006b, p. 15)

In response to a number of highly publicized sexually-oriented and violent crimes against children, the federal government enacted legislation aimed at monitoring sex offenders in the community. Sex offender registration and notification laws are intended to prevent sexual victimization by informing the general public about would-be danger, providing the police with additional investigative tools, and deterring offenders from engaging in further criminal behavior. Despite public support for these laws, it is not clear they effectively reduce sex offending. This essay reviews the development of these laws, their application, and the impact of registration and notification.

Purpose – This chapter considers the consequences on liberty in relationship to the development of the international problem-solving court movement.

Design/methodology/approach – The research, which relies principally on ethnographic fieldwork in six different common law countries (England, Ireland, Scotland, Australia, Canada, and the United States), explores the development of local problem-solving courts in each jurisdiction. These include drug courts, community courts, domestic violence courts, and mental health courts. The ethnographic fieldwork was supplemented with data from various other sources, including government reports, parliamentary debates, evaluations of individual court programs, publications issued by various advocacy groups, media accounts, public statements and articles by problem-solving court judges, and analyses of specialty courts in law reviews and other academic journals.

Findings – The research reveal that the five countries outside of the United States demonstrate greater concern with protecting the dignity of the court, due process, and individual rights – or what the Australians refer to as open and natural justice.

Originality/value – It is the first large-scale comparative study of problem-solving courts in the common law countries where the movement is most advanced.

This chapter revisits some of the early contributions of classical sociologist Edward A. Ross (1866-1951) and his reflections on ecological influences in the development and progress of modern societies. Ross, who is known for his writings on social control, developed the notion that nature can strike back and thus reveal vulnerabilities of modern society. This idea is discussed to illustrate the tension between a purely sociological perspective on the natural world and attempts at integrating environmental variables into a social theory of interaction and causal influence. Building on Ross's insights, it is argued that 21st century sociological theories might consider unexpected ecological influences as unavoidable and thus as a “normal” control factor of modern society itself.

The potential afforded by contemporary forms of surveillance to monitor vast amounts of information raises a number of problems, including ‘who or what’ should be distinguished as the subject of surveillance and how is the extension and intensification of surveillance to be legitimated without encroaching on the sensibilities of those who deem themselves innocent. It is argued that the ‘chav’, one of the latest variants of an underclass discourse to emerge in the United Kingdom, provides an example of how an ideological figure can be employed both to justify the introduction of disciplinary surveillance technologies and become the proposed identification of targets for such apparatus. Following an outline of the term underclass and a guide to the language and imagery of the ‘chav’, the argument presented in this chapter is developed and represented through an examination of a range of media representing and responding to anti-social behaviour. The utilisation of media to render visible and represent those seen as responsible for anti-social and criminal behaviour is both an application of new technologies of surveillance and a re-invention of older forms of collective and communal punishment, control and regulation. What these examples share is the communication of a frame that equates ‘chavs’ with ‘anti-social’ behaviour and surveillance as a central component of any strategy for community safety. Thus, rather than the existence of ‘chavs’, or any allegedly threatening ‘other’ requiring surveillance, it is argued that it is surveillance that requires the existence of the ‘chav’. Put another way, if ‘chavs’ did not exist, then, for the exponents of surveillance at least, they would have to be invented.

This chapter explores the competing perspectives (i.e., the “community advocates” and the “community skeptics”) on the recent move toward community in an attempt to conceptualize what this “move” means for social control. An examination of the inclusiveness of community initiatives with a focus on community policing is used to demonstrate that the move toward community contains elements of both empowerment and responsibilization. In particular, the move toward community is paradoxical in that empowerment and responsibilization occurs simultaneously and to varying degrees within inclusive community initiatives. It is argued that a socially inclusive approach to community-police partnerships works to enhance society's web of social control. However, at the same time, community members hold the potential to work together to shape this web of social control.

Chapter X of The Social System is often cited as the “charter” for the specialty field of medical sociology. A notable feature of its analysis is the argument that the physician is an agent of social control in relation to the patient. This argument grounds the application to medical practice of Parsons’ general conception that social control is an aspect of all social relationships. Parsons started by addressing the situation of a patient who assumes the sick role and then becomes the patient of a physician. The sick role involves a suspension of at least some of the performance expectations associated with a person's everyday social life, such as expectations of working productively at one's job, attending the meeting of a civic association, or caring for one's family members. But in assuming the sick role, an individual encounters new expectations that he or she should try to get well. For minor illnesses this may involve only resting, drinking fluids, and avoiding stress. For more serious illnesses, given our culture's valuation of scientific medicine, it typically involves placing oneself in the care of a physician. It then becomes the physician's duty to offer treatment and guidance to restore one's health and enable one to return to meet expectations of everyday roles. Thus the physician becomes an agent of social control.

The concept of social control was formalized with the establishment of sociology as a scientific discipline in America in the last two decades of the 19th century. Two early American sociologists in particular, Edward A. Ross and Lester F. Ward, were instrumental in the movement to conceptualize social control and illustrate its applicability with regard to various social phenomena. During Ross's time social control has undergone extensive refinement, represented most recently in Chriss’ typology of social control consisting of informal, legal, and medical control. In this chapter, informal control is explored specifically as it relates to the control of sexual activity and food quests beginning in human antiquity.

James J. Chriss received his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1994. He is currently Professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminology at Cleveland State University. His latest book is Beyond Community Policing: From Early American Beginnings to the 21st Century (Paradigm Publishers, 2010).

Cover of Social Control: Informal, Legal and Medical
DOI
10.1108/S1521-6136(2010)15
Publication date
2010-12-21
Book series
Sociology of Crime, Law and Deviance
Editor
Series copyright holder
Emerald Publishing Limited
ISBN
978-0-85724-345-4
eISBN
978-0-85724-346-1
Book series ISSN
1521-6136