ABSTRACT
The study of social control is at once more and less comprehensive than the sociology of law. By law, social scientists generally mean those explicitly formulated rules of behavior that are enforced by a legal organization distinct from the other organizations of a society. This chapter emphasizes departure from equivalence of exchange, not the absolute amount of the favors done by either party. It considers both actual and virtual changes: what does happen if a man departs from his existing level of obedience to a norm, and what would happen if he did so, although in fact he does not, in attempting to understand the processes of social control. The chapter describes the process of social control in at least two somewhat different language systems. It also describes control in the language of reward and punishment and in the language of the distribution of goods such as intangible goods and tangible goods. The chapter examines the social control of output in the Bank Wiring Observation Room.
