26 Jan Define and then contrast the concepts of norms, mores and folkways. Discussion Board Guidelines: Submit a response to the di

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CJL4415 Law and Social Control

Informal Control

(Chriss Chapter 3)

Overview

Informal Social Control

All those mechanisms and practices of ordinary,

everyday life whereby group pressures to conform

are brought to bear against the individual.

 

Back to Socialization

• Starting point is socialization.
• Individuals are held in check by the mere presence of fellow human beings living and operating within shared lifeworlds.
• Assumption of dominance of the group over individual.

• Primary Groups

Closest associates, families and friends.

Expressive behavior – members interact with one another for the sake of each other's company, or simply because it's the right thing to do.

• Reference Groups

Groups that individuals identify or look up to.

Close identification, emulate actions and ideas.

May be actual groups but need not be (fashionable pop stars).

• Secondary Groups

Work groups, casual aquaintances, and service encounters.

Instrumental behavior – group activities are engaged in for the sake of pursuing a collective goal, not necessarily for the goal of being together.

Agents of Socialization

 

• Socialization = the learning of a culture

• Eight basic agents of socialization that help steer people toward norm-conforming and away from edeviant behavior:

1. Family

2. Community

3. Peers

4. School

5. Work and Consumption

6. Religion

7. Mass Media

8. Legal System

• Society exists to the extent that people are aggregated together and associate with one another across space and time

 

Robbers Cave Experiment

 

 

 

How Groups Shape Individual Conformity

 

The Asch Experiment

 

• Majority of three is much more powerful and persuasive than a majority of seven

• The crucial effect of group size is found in the transition from two to three

• Finding others who think like you can mitigate somewhat the negative sanctions imposed by a group against non-conformers

 

Later Research on Conformity and Obedience

• Milgram's electric shock experiment

• The Emperor's Dilemma

People comply with unpopular norms because they fear whatever social sanctions may accrue to them for non-compliance.

People also seek to look sincere in their belief in the rightness or propriety of the norm.

Enforcement of popular norms arise and are sustained primarily through local misrepresentations perpetrated, at least initially, potentially only a handful of true believers.

 

 

The Importance of Small Groups

• Primary groups = Involuntary membership

(children)

• Secondary groups = voluntary membership

(friends) – example of non-voluntary secondary group membership is the draft

• Social circles

• Ways that small groups enable or constrain everyday life:

a) Basis for primary socialization

b) Imepetus for social change

c) Provide "strong ties" for members which creates

d) Development of collective identity

e) Provides members individual identity as well belonging

Erving Goffman and Dramaturgical Theory

• Interaction Order = face-to-face interaction represents a domain of activity that deserves to be studied, the relatively stable sequence of events and activities that is generated whenever persons enter into each other's immediate presence

• Face-to-face gatherings always expose our bodies and minds to vulnerabilities

• "Techniques of social management" amount to all the ways persons everyday present themselves before a group of others

• The presentation of self is one of the overriding preoccupations of individuals (front and back stage)

• Impression Management – the effort by individuals in interaction to put their best foot forward

• Interaction rituals – fleeting or perfunctory acts by which persons convey to others in interaction that they are ratified participants in whatever activities are the focus of attention

Persons are desperate to convey to others that they are well-demeaned inds.

Civil Inattention – practice of acting as if you didn't see something when you really did.

Role Distance – tendency to place distance between one's authentic self and one's virtual role in particular situations.

 

 

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