Now let's turn to social control, power, and
conflict.
Social control refers to the mechanisms by
which behavior is constrained and directed
into acceptable channels, thus maintaining
conformity.
One way societies control behavior is through
sanctions, both positive and negative.
Pioneering French Social Scientist Emile Durkheim
differentiated between what he called Repressive
and Restitutive Sanctions.
Repressive sanctions, he thought, predominated
in simple societies without much social differentiation.
Sanctions in such societies were harsh and
punitive to discourage wrongdoing. When an
individual committed a crime, the entire society
was outraged and struck the criminal down.
In more complex, socially differentiated societies,
social solidarity was upheld by what Durkheim
called restitutive sanctions, which attempted
to restore the pre-crime situation and maintain
social order rather than merely punish a wrongdoer.
Small-scale societies, that may not have had
formal social control systems, exercised social
control through a whole range of practices.
Socialization involves teaching the young
people the norms of society (as well as possible
sanctions)
Social control may be enforced through public
opinion, by which people try to keep others
in line.
It can also be exercised though supernatural
belief systems, the set of beliefs in forces
that transcend the natural, observable world.
If you violate social norms, the ancestors,
spirits, of gods may get angry and will find
a way to deal with you.
Additional ways social control is exercised
in small-scale societies might be through
corporate lineages, that is, descent groups
whose members engage in daily activities together.
People in a dispute may also turn to intermediaries,
or mediators.
Among Inuit groups, rivals may engage in song
duels, in which they ridicule one another
in public performances to resolve a dispute,
say between rivals for the affections of a
girl. Here is a verse translated from a song
duel: Mighty Samo, to begin with I feared
you in the song duel, but now I see whom I
have before me! A blusterer who is trying
to frighten me.
Another example of song dueling comes from
Eminem's film Eight Mile. I won't repeat the
lyrics here, because I don't want to offend
polite company.
Age sets are a form of social organization
in which people of roughly the same age pass
through different levels of society together.
Age sets exercise social control over members
and may also seek to resolve broader disputes.
Moots are informal courts that provide disputants
with the opportunity to express their point
of view in an effort to resolve conflicts.
Social control could also be enforced by oath
taking, in which the gods would bear witness
to the truth of what a person says.
Another kind of social control was through
ordeals: through fire, immersion in water,
or drinking of poison to test someone suspected
of wrongdoing
In state political systems, social control
is through formal mechanisms and institutions
of law and courts.
Laws are cultural rules that regulate human
behavior and maintain order
Courts uphold legal prescription and are supported
by governmental use of force
We'll discuss law in a little more detail
below.
Resistance is active or passive ways in which
people and groups seek to oppose power and
domination.
Scholar James C. Scott refers to as weapons
of the weak as one type of resistance. Scott
argues that most of the time, people cannot
stand up to power too openly for fear of reprisals.
Instead, they engage in everyday forms of
resistance such as foot-dragging, evasion,
false compliance, pilfering, feigned ignorance,
slander and sabotage. He finds these in rural
and factory settings, and also among the middle
class and elites (e.g. through tax evasion
or conscription), but particularly among rural
people who are physically dispersed and less
politically organized than urban populations
(Scott 1985). According to Scott only occasionally
does resistance break out into open rebellion
or revolution.
Rebellions and Revolutions are violent attempts
to disrupt state social control and to impose
social control from below.
A rebellion is an attempt within a society
to disrupt the status quo and redistribute
the power and resources
A Revolution seeks to overthrow the existing
form of political organization, the principles
of economic production and distribution, and
the allocation of social status
As we saw earlier, in Richard Lee's Eating
Christmas in the Kalahari, the !Kung use the
social sanction of mockery and ridicule to
enforce the norm of humility.
In the U.S., violation of norms ranges can
range from mild to very serious. A mild norm
violation might be overdressing for anthropology
class. (Of course, this is an online course;
we don't have class. You may be in your bathrobe,
which would draw looks if you wore it to class.)
Bad table manners, such as eating with your
fingers in a restaurant, might draw ridicule.
Illegal parking could cost you a small fine.
Shoplifting could lead to a larger fine or
even a short jail term. Grand larceny might
result in a longer prison term. Very serious
crimes, such as treason or murder, result
in hard sanctions, including life in prison
or even the death penalty. The more serious
the violation, as culturally defined, the
more severe the sanction.
Let's turn to power
Power is a term that describes the capacity
of people to exert their will on others.
Politics, then, involves the ways in which
power relations especially unequal power relations
affect human social affairs.
A key problem of power is how to deal with
difference.
As 20th-century philosopher Hannah Arendt
put it, every society must deal with others
from whom one cannot escape and with whom
one must share the world.
As our own heated national political debates
illustrate, politics involves the presence
in the political arena of actors with alternative
understandings and competing projects
We don't all see the affairs of the nation
the same way. So how we use the political
system to deal with one another?
Every group seeking consensus is faced with
two key problems of difference:
The first problem has to do with the organization
in internal diversity.
People whose behavior is too different in
some aspect can have their identities socially
reclassified, as insane or as criminals, for
example.
During the Cold War, the United States and
Russia accused one another of declaring political
dissidents insane and confining them to mental
institutions.
The second problem involves relations with
external communities.
When conflicts arise, political leaders must
decide whether to negotiate or to resort to
force. (In the U.S. we continually debate
whether to use diplomacy or direct military
action to intervene in our conflicts with
the Middle East.)
Negotiation can involve the use of a formally
recognized third party to assist in the settling
of differences between groups in conflict.
Because there are currently no formal diplomatic
relations between the U.S. and Iran, for example,
the Swiss Embassy in Tehran serves as an intermediary.
Relations of force include raiding, or the
short-term use of force with a limited goal,
such as stealing a few head of cattle, or
other material goods, from a neighboring group.
Feuding involves the ongoing, chronic hostilities
between groups of neighbors or kin.
In the U.S., the famous feud between the Hatfields
and the McCoys of Kentucky and West Virginia
lasted from 1863 to 1891 and was based on
family honor, justice, and revenge.
And then there's war, or as Carl von Clausewitz
famously called it, the continuation of politics
by other means."
Warfare is violent conflict involving entire
societies mobilized against each other, seeking
to kill as many members of the other society
as possible until one side surrenders to the
other.
Merriam-Webster defines warfare as military
operations or violent armed conflict between
enemies : hostilities, war;
also : an activity undertaken by a political
unit (as a nation [state]) to weaken or destroy
another 
Power can take the forms of consensus or coercion.
Consensus is social action produced in accordance
with social norms through peoples' freely
given assent. Power based on consensus entails
hegemony. As the Italian philosopher, Antonio
Gramsci put it, hegemony means the success
of the dominant classes in presenting their
definition of reality, their view of the world,
in such a way that other classes accept it
as 'common sense'. The general 'consensus'
is that it is the only sensible way of seeing
the world.
Coercion involves the use of force (symbolic
and physical) to generate or constrain particular
social actions. Domination refers to power
based on coercion.
In most cases, coercion and consensus operate
in tandem.
Ideology is more open and explicit, while
hegemony (or hegemonic consciousness) tends
to refer to common sense or taken-for-grantedness
about the way the world it.
Ideology is a conscious and explicit system
of meanings, values, and beliefs that uphold
(or challenge) a particular political, economic,
social, cultural, or religious system. (What
is good for GM is good for America.)
Hegemony refers to the ability of a 
dominant group to create consent and agreement
within a population without threatening to
use force. Cultural hegemony has to do with
they way institutions of media, schools, and
religion shape, often unconsciously, what
people think is normal, natural, and possible,
and therefore directly influences the scope
of human action and interaction.
Here we see a boy backing another boy into
a corner and grabbing his shirt.]
What kind of power is this?
Bullying-also coercion
Another dimension of power is discipline,
both external and internalized.
French philosopher Michel Foucault studied
the dynamics of power, discipline, and punishment
extensively. He argued that Power needs to
be considered as a productive network which
runs through the whole social body.
Internalized discipline means that Social
actors discipline themselves, not only to
avoid external sanctions, but also
in order to produce valued goods and services;
and
simultaneously to produce rewards: pay, promotion,
status, identity, fantasy.
This includes kind of discipline that we learn
in school and that we then carry with us into
the workplace. The discipline of school allows
us to become disciplined workers and consumers.
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