Definition of Social Control

When speaking of social control, reference is made to the group of norms and regulations of different kinds that are explicitly established or implicitly by a society to maintain the order of individuals and allow the development of an organized standard of living and checked. Social control can be present in different ways, both through formal and informal practices, through socially accepted regulations and also through coercion of the same individual on himself.

Social control aims to keep social groups within a formally accepted order in such a way that that a number of basic regulations are respected that contribute to generating organized lifestyles and not conflicting. In this sense, the most clearly visible regulations regarding the idea of ​​social control are those that are express through laws, statutes and formal regulations that all members of a society must comply with same way. These measures are created and accepted by the whole of society since they are explicitly established. Explicit social control can also be related to political interests and the nullification of political expressions of various groups in society, although such situations may fall within the framework of it

implicit on certain occasions.

However, social control is also exercised through informal methods that do not need to be made explicit and that sometimes have much more. force than formal methods. Here we must mention the social control exercised by religions, social hierarchies, the media, communication and the propaganda, moral norms and others. All this set of informal social control norms seek to generate in the individual the acquisition of socially approved behaviors on a voluntary basis. Often times, these implicit norms of social control may not be entirely ethical, especially when it comes to propaganda and the power of certain advertising messages.

Finally, social control is also exercised from the same individual and it is here where institutions as the family and the religion they have special weight. These self-imposed norms of social control have to do strongly with the censorship of certain attitudes and thoughts and in extreme cases can result in the development of overly repressive and overly repressive personalities. self-censorship.

Topics in Social Control