Social control: its conceptual origins and instrumental uses

Abstract

This study examines the conceptual origins and instrumental uses of social control, a central concept for sociology since its founding and for the analysis of societies. It explores the two fields of greatest development of the theme, sociological and psychological theory, situating its elaboration predominantly within North American social-scientific culture. It analyzes the structural-functionalist meaning of the concept, its distinction from coercive control, its relation to Tönnies's Gemeinschaft-Gesellschaft model and European criticisms of that model. It discusses the continuity between early scholars and contemporary empirical research. It concludes that social control does not rest exclusively on a normative conception, needing to incorporate ecological, technological, economic and institutional dimensions, requiring a new sociological imagination in face of the crisis of the structural-functionalist model.