2.1✅

• for society to function smoothly people need to behave more or less as others expect them to, example: if the postman decided to post all the mail to just 1 address in each street
• social control involves persuading or compelling people to conform to society’s norms, laws and expectation
• society has ways of achieving control over it’s member‘s behaviour, which we can group into 2 main forms: internal + external forms of social control
• internal forms of social control: these are controls over our behaviour thar come from within ourselves, from our personalities or our values, as such they are therefore also forms of self-control
• internal forms of social control: they lead us to conform to the rules of society + the groups that we belong to because we feel confidently that is it the right thing to do
• moral conscience/superego: according to Freuds psychoanalytic theory we conform to society’s expectation + obey its rule because our superego tells us to do so
• moral conscience/superego: alongside the id + ego = the superego forms part of our personality
• moral conscience/superego: our superego tells us what is right and wrong + inflicts guilt feelings on us if we fail to do as it urges
• moral conscience/superego: our superego develops through early socialisation within the family, as a sort of internalised ‘nagging parent’, telling us how we should behave
• moral conscience/superego: its function is to restrain the selfish, ‘animal’ urges of the id = if you acted on those urges they would often lead us into anti-social + criminal behaviour
• moral conscience/superego: the superego allows us to exercise self-control + behave in socially acceptable ways
• there are 3 main topics that come under internal forms of social control they are: moral conscience or superego, tradition and culture + internalisation of social rules + morality
• tradition + culture: the culture to which we belong also becomes part of us through socialisation
• tradition + culture: we come to accept its values, norms and traditions as part of our identity
• tradition + culture: e.g. believers follow the religious traditions that they have been raised in such as the Muslim tradition of fasting during Ramadan or the jewish tradition of sharing the Shabbat evening meal
• tradition + culture: conforming to such traditions is an important way of affirming one’s identity and being accepted as a member of a particular community
• internalisation of social rules + morality: both our superego + the traditions we follow become part of our inner self or personality
• internalisation of social rules + morality: although both superego + traditions start as things outside of us = either as our parents’ rules + values in the case of the superego, or as those of our culture or social group in the case of tradition
• internalisation of social rules + morality: socialisation = in both cases we internalise these rules through the process of socialisation, whether from our parents or from wider social groups + institutions e.g. religion, school, peer groups
• internalisation of social rules + morality: socialisation = in this way society’s rules and moral code become our own personal rules + moral code, as a result we come to conform willingly to social norms
• internalisation of social rules + morality: ’rational ideology’ = is a term that has been used to describe the fact that we internalise social rules + use them to tell us what is right + wrong, this enables us to keep within the law
• external forms of social control: as well as internal forms of control such as our conscience, society has external forms of control that aim to ensure we conform to its expectations + keep to its rules
• external forms of social control: society does this through agencies of social control
• there are 4 main subtopics under external forms of social control they are: agencies of social control, the criminal justice system, coercion, fear of punishment
• agencies of social control: these are organisations or institutions that impose rules on us in an effort to make us behave in certain ways, including: family, peer group + education system
• agencies of social control: e.g. parents may send a naughty child to bed , friends may ignore someone who lie + teacher could give a disruptive student a detention
• agencies of social control: all the given examples are negative sanctions (punishments), although agencies of social control can give positive sanctions (rewards) to those who conform e.g. student could earn praise, gold stars etc. from the teacher
• agencies of social control: both positive and negative sanctions help to impose social control
• agencies of social control: this echos Skinner’s operant learning theory of behaviour reinforcement = punishments deter undesired behaviour + rewards encourage acceptable behaviour
• the criminal justice system: the criminal justice system contains several agencies of social control, each w/ the power to use formal legal sanctions against individuals in an attempt to make them conform to society’s laws
• the criminal justice system: these agencies + their powers include the following: police, the CPS, judges + magistrates + the prison service
• the police: they have the power to stop, search, arrest, detain + question suspects
• the CPS: they can charge a suspect + prosecute them in court
• judges + magistrates: they have the power to bail the accused or remand them in custody + to sentence the guilty to a variety of punishments
• the prison service: they can detain prisoners against their will for the duration of their sentence + punish prisoners misbehaviour e.g. by putting them in solitary confinement
• the criminal justice system: all the agencies + powers are all negative sanctions, but the justice system also had positive sanctions (rewards) that it. can be used to control behaviour
• the criminal justice system: e.g. assisting the prosecution is likely to earn an offender a lower sentence, while good behaviour by prisoners may earn them more privileges + earlier parole
• coercion: involves the use or threat of force in order to make someone do (or stop doing) something
• coercion: force may involve physical or psychological violence or other forms of pressure
• coercion: the negative sanctions of the criminal justice system are examples of coercion = sending someone to prison for stealing is a form of coercion aimed at preventing further offending (if only for the period that the thief is in jail)