ABSTRACT
Cycles, Determinism, Development, Dialectic, Historicism, History and Sociology, Reproduction, Structuralism.
Bibliography
The idea of social control (and the word itself) comes to us from American sociology. It is also associated with linguistic connotations which do not translate easily into French usage. In English, the word ‘control’ has a positive sense. To control means to master. Thus Talcott Parsons, in an otherwise questionable translation, translated the German word ‘Herrschaft’ (domination), which Max Weber uses constantly, as ‘imperative control’. In French, the word ‘control’ has above all a negative sense. To control means to supervise, possibly to prevent. It is thus that we talk of parliamentary control (Alain defined the member of parliament as a ‘controller’), of jurisdictional control, or even of financial control.
