ABSTRACT
The term ‘social control’ may have a wide range of meaning. It may refer to any ways in which the very fact of living in a society may influence the conduct of a member of that society. Usually, however, it refers more specifically to those ways in which a society maintains order among its members, keeps them from ‘doing wrong’, from anti-social behaviour, contrary to accepted standards. The very notion of control itself implies a direction, a command of action in reference to some conception of stability, a restraint of deviation from a norm. In Hoebel's words, ‘The entire operating system of sanctioning norms is what constitutes a system of social control.’ 1 Elaborating this, we may say that social control involves: a system of values of the society; a set of categories in which these values are expressed; rules for guidance about behaviour; procedures for establishing whether rules are kept or not and for taking action accordingly; and sanctions, positive and negative, whereby conformity to rules is promoted.
