SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY
Paradigms of Social
Control
Network or Hierarchy?
Angarag Otgonbayar
POL 358
Professor Anil Hira
4/9/2013
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Contents
Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. 2
Social Network .............................................................................................................................................. 2
Hirschi ....................................................................................................................................................... 2
Attachment ........................................................................................................................................... 3
Commitment ......................................................................................................................................... 3
Involvement .......................................................................................................................................... 4
Belief ..................................................................................................................................................... 5
White and Norton ..................................................................................................................................... 5
Hierarchy ....................................................................................................................................................... 7
Dominance or Governmental Hierarchy ................................................................................................... 7
Production Hierarchy .............................................................................................................................. 10
Analysis and Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 11
Policy Implications ...................................................................................................................................... 12
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Introduction
We have come a long way from our hunter-gatherer ancestors. From a simple hierarchical
structure we have progressed into a new type of social animal with complex social networks and
multitude of hierarchical structures. While it is a given that hierarchy and social networks exist,
the field of how these factors affect social control is relatively new. This paper attempts to
review and offer a hybrid explanation of the elements of social control by drawing on key points
from social networking theory and different types of hierarchical social structures.
Social Network
The first paradigm that I will be using to analyze the issue of social control is the idea of
social networking. I will be looking at two sides of the paradigm put forth by different authors.
Hirschi
Travis Hirschi is a prominent criminologist that has contributed to the field and the
discourse greatly with his published work in 1969 Causes of Delinquency and the General
Theory of Crime in 1990. Hirschi stated that the theories that attempt to explain delinquency
make a fundamental faulty assumption that criminal behaviour is learnt, hence, his assumption is
that: “all of us, beginning at birth, possess the hedonistic drive to act in the kinds of selfish and
aggressive ways that lead to criminal behaviour” (Sage Publications), but the social bonds that
we create act as a self-control mechanism. He then offers us 4 different elements that can help
one create social bonds.
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Attachment
The first source of social bonds that Hirschi gives us is attachment. Hirschi says that
attachment “refers to the level of psychological affection one has for prosocial others and
institutions” (Sage Publications, p. 58). Hirschi means that individuals are less likely to commit
deviant acts because they do not wish to ruin the bond that has been created. An example is
mother-son attachment, just because the son has made a psychological tie with his mother and
would not want to disappoint a loved one. Attachment is a concept that can be applied to the
animal kingdom too; one of the most famous experiments on maternal attachment was Harlow’s
maternal deprivation. In his experiment with rhesus monkey infants that he raised, he noticed
later that “although the baby monkeys were physically perfectly healthy, there behavior was very
abnormal: they exhibited weird stereotypic behaviors, sucking their fingers and toes, and rocking
back and forth” (van der Horst. & van der Veer, 2008, p. 331). Attachment can be obtained
through a variety of platforms: maternal attachment, attachment to school or religious
institutions. While attachment does not explain why people kill, it can show us an insight to how
social control works.
Commitment
The second type of bond that Hirschi highlights is commitment. In his words,
commitment means ”the importance of the social relationships that people value, which they
would not want to risk jeopardizing by committing criminal or deviant acts” (Sage Publications,
p. 58). In essence, he means that for youths, because they don’t want to be seen in a negative
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light by those that they have made important social connections with (parents, friends, teachers).
The same can be said for adults except in cases like employment and marriage.
Involvement
The third type of bond that Hirschi notes is involvement. Involvement according to
Hirschi is “the opportunity costs associated with how people spend their time” (Sage
Publications, p. 58). Essentially he says that if a youth is spending his time in legitimate
activities, then by definition, that person is not engaging in illegal activities.
However, I would argue that this type of involvement does not build a real bond. Going
by the logic of this definition, how would one explain white collar crime? The person is engaged
in a legitimate activity which is his job but the legitimate activity has given him the means of
illegal activity. Instead, I would like to use Harrison White’s argument of discipline. White says
that “we work with people with whom we may have nothing in common besides our
commitment to creating whatever it is we create. We act to protect ourselves from threats to our
identities or well being, excluding and accepting others as a joint activity. White calls this type of
joint activity a discipline” (Steiny, 2007). In this sense, bonds of involvement can be created by
the simple fact of doing an activity together like playing a certain type of sport, gardening,
cooking or even behaviours which are harmful to others (bullying etc). The concept of discipline
can be applied to apes and chimpanzee behaviour too. Social activities like grooming, foraging
together or fighting together are an important part of developing group membership. In the case
of Tiki, by being involved in the same activities as the group, he secured his membership in the
new group (Losin, 2012).
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Belief
The final type of bond that Hirschi talks about is belief. According to him, belief “refers
to the degree to which one adheres to the values associated with behaviors that conform to the
law; the assumption being that the more important such values are to a person, the less likely he
or she is to engage in criminal/deviant behaviour” (Sage Publications, p. 59).
While Hirschi originally developed this theory to tackle delinquency, his theory offers us
an insight into how bonds play a role in controlling our behaviour. In an edited version of his
original theory, Hirschi later offered the notion of inhibitors and self-control. The bonds
(attachment, commitment, involvement and belief) act as an inhibitor when someone is about to
commit a criminal act. He also said that the cost of a criminal act should factor in all costs, longterm or not.
White and Norton
There is another author that I would like to discuss in detail (former of the two
mentioned) this paradigm as well. Harrison White and Anne Norton both offer us a slightly
different perspective of how identities form in individuals and how those identities influence our
behaviour. While Hisrchi says that it is our bonds that stop us from committing criminal acts,
White and Norton’s perspective on the paradigm is that our identities are a self-control
mechanism and contributes to social control.
Anne Norton and Harrison White approach the issue in the opposite way that Hirschi did,
their assumption was that social identity is something that is developed and created and as Anne
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Norton said, the first identity is no identity as a child is born a clean slate. However, they
underline the same means in which we achieve the identity or social bonds: social networks.
In his original work, Identity and Control, Harrison White says that identity is formed
depending on contingencies, contentions, triage, decoupling and stories. In the second edition of
his book, White offers us an easier variation of his explanation.
1. Imagine coming into a new situation where you are unknown, such as starting a new job,
attending a new school, or attending a conference. You need to establish an “[i]dentity [that]
achieves social footing as source and destination of communications to which identities
attribute meaning”. You might strive to be seen as witty, friendly, helpful or any number of
things that must be established by your interactions.
2. For a time, a group you are in might settle down with “one as topic selector, another as
clown, etc.—and may celebrate themselves by story or other work”. This second sense of
identity is that of a role. There are also roles in the global sense: mother, doctor, etc.
3. The third sense is when you carry the identity you achieve in one setting into another
setting. There is a mismatch between what is appropriate for one role and the other.
4. The fourth sense of identity is “what is usually meant by identity in ordinary talk”(Steiny,
2007)
In essence, his core arguments have not changed. The first point can be seen as the result
of contingency, one could not have predicted that that person would be in an unknown
environment and the need to establish an identity, what I mean to say is that how the person
arrived there can be a mix of socio economic factors instead of him being there because of a
future plan. The second point can be seen as the applying of triage, the routine or constant role of
one being seen as a clown or leader. This routine or constant repetition of the role can lead to the
development of beliefs around expected behaviour such as the class clown being expected to
behave in a way that conforms to his expected role. The third point can be related back to the
issue of decoupling, where routines break down or are challenged. An example is when the
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identity conflicts as one leaves the workplace where he might have had the identity of
manager/leader to being that of a parent at home. The last point is the same as his original point
of stories, that our identities can also be formulated and further reinforced based on what you say
and what stories people around you tell about you. White says that, through the creation and
continuous evolution of our identity that exhorts social control over us and acts as a self-control
mechanism.
New or old editions, White and Anne Norton shows us that the formation of our identities
is not a simple matter. More importantly, their research suggested signs of how our sense of
identity can exhibit self or social control over our behaviour. Coupled with Hirschi’s theory, it
shows us the importance of social networking in our everyday lives and how these networks
influence who we are and what we do.
Hierarchy
Social hierarchies exist in most primate groups and in human societies. To explain
aspects of social control stemming from the hierarchical social structures, I am going to be
looking at two types of hierarchies.
Dominance or Governmental Hierarchy
Dominance hierarchies are the most primitive types of hierarchies, in this social structure
there is usually one leader. The dominance hierarchy stems from the natural scarcity and
distribution of resources. In a dominance hierarchy, whoever is at the top must exhibit qualities
of social dominance. Social dominance means the relative power of the dominant actor over the
lower ranking ones in the hierarchy. In this sense, a leader does not have to be the most
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physically strong but those who are aggressive and intimidating or excel at bluffing and
deception or even wisdom and seniority. In the example of the herd of horses, physical prowess
is not the sole decider of who the leader is going to be. Stallions, while being the most physically
superior in terms of strength, do not necessarily lead the pack but instead experienced mares are
usually at the head of the pack. “The older mare has had the most experience. She has
categorized more incidents, has had more close encounters, and survived more threats than any
of the younger members of the herd. She knows when to run, which direction to run, and how far
to run” (Miller, 1995, p. 467). In human society, this paradigm is mirrored. We put more value
on experience and knowledge over physical prowess.
There can be many similarities that can be drawn from governmental and primitive
dominance hierarchies. “First, there is only one government hierarchy per society. Second,
everyone in a society must be subject to the government hierarchy” (Rubin, 2000, p. 269). Waal
(1998) says that politics is most rooted in primate behaviour and that humans have only created
new ways to gain power. While it is true that in modern democratic nations, the leader does not
have to exhort his dominance by means of aggression or violence, however, as Waal (1998) said,
there is instead a symbolic battle that occurs but one has to show that he is better than his
opposition. In both governmental and dominance hierarchies, there is usually one leader and
there is a division of power in the hierarchy underneath the leader. As Waal (1998) said, it is
unlikely that an alpha male will succeed without making coalitions/gaining lieutenants. Hence,
those who help the alpha male gain and maintain his position are given power. This is mirrored
in human societies as well, political parties or factions; whether it be tribal or in a regime but
they are fundamentally the same coalitions that chimpanzees have to form to vie for the position
of the alpha male.
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The cost of leaving a governmental or dominance hierarchy is high and the higher you
are on the hierarchy, the higher the cost of leaving or of the hierarchy collapsing. Rubin (2009)
also said that “universal hierarchies with limited exit characterize government hierarchies”
(pg.269) and commenting on the difficulty of leaving a governmental hierarchy, he said that: “Of
course, at various times some individuals have found emigration a preferred strategy to the draft
or to other government policies, but this is generally a minority decision” (Rubin, 2000, p. 269).
Also, as shown in macaques, one can be at the top of the hierarchy depending on your matrilineal
line and even an infant in a higher ranking matrilineal line can rank higher than an adult in a
lower matrilineal line. However, if one leaves a dominance hierarchy and joins another, all of his
prior status position in the hierarchy is gone and he is usually the lowest in the new hierarchy
because a pre-existing structure was already there, thereby losing his access to better resources
and power (Losin, 2012). Because the cost of leaving a dominance hierarchy is very high as
there is only one in a society at a given time, it exhorts social control on those in the hierarchy.
The two different ways that I believe of gaining social dominance are fear and respect.
By the former, one can secure his social dominance by constant acts of aggression, violence and
intimidation. This can lead to an atmosphere of fear that exhorts social control over those who
are ruled or led. Cases of ethnic violence or humanitarian crises can be attributed to the desire to
create fear and dominance in a populace. By the latter, one can secure social dominance by
using rhetoric, experience, knowledge or charisma. The feeling that is created is different
depending on your approach but in both cases, the leader has to prove that they are better than
others.
In contemporary society, there are usually two main sectors: the public and private sector.
The public sector is a governmental or dominance hierarchy, so if one does not wish to subscribe
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to the public hierarchy then there is the private sector. The private sector can be understood as a
production hierarchy.
Production Hierarchy
The other type of hierarchy that we have to subscribe to is the production hierarchy.
Where your relative position in the hierarchy is determined by what you produce or the position
in a factory or company. Natural cases of production hierarchy exist in ants and bees, but the
specialization of labour is different. In human hierarchies, the labour can migrate and change
whereas in bees and ants the specialization is hardwired and they do not switch specialization.
In order to understand human production hierarchies, we have to look at the time when
our hunter-gatherer ancestors shifted to sedentary lifestyle. Simple hunter gatherers lived in
small settlements and were “mobile, egalitarian, and the only "occupational specialization" is by
age” (Rubin, 2000, p. 267). In more complex hunter-gatherer societies, occupational
specialization was common. Regardless, by the time there were large agricultural societies,
division of labour, specialization and hierarchy had already become important to societal life
(Rubin, 2000). Specialization and division of labour also means that each individual is no longer
self-sufficient, and they have to rely on an alternative method to gain goods that they do not
produce. According to Rubin (2000), there are two ways to obtain the goods: through the market
or production hierarchies. If one has the resources, the goods can be bought straight from the
market however, if you do not possess the resources then the alternative path is to subscribe to a
production hierarchy. This creates a dependence on production hierarchies as the only way to
achieve the means (money) to the end (purchasing goods that you don’t produce) is to join the
hierarchy and sell your skill or product. Instances of production hierarchies can be seen in
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corporate structures where there is the Chief Executive Officer and there are chains of hierarchy
of managers, assistant managers, secretaries and workers and there are hundreds of more division
of hierarchies that exist within the main hierarchy (district managers, store managers etc).
The fact that we need to rely on production hierarchies for the means of purchasing goods
that we cannot buy, it exhorts a form of social control over the workers and because of the costs
associated with leaving the job, finding another one and downtime in between is high, Deincentivising social deviance. Of course membership in a production hierarchy is voluntary and
nothing is to say that if the cost of staying in the hierarchy outweighs leaving it, then workers
will do so.
Analysis and Conclusion
It is difficult to attempt to explain the issue of social control through one paradigm. The
bonds that we create by social interactions like attachments, commitments, involvements and
beliefs contribute to our identity and who we are which leads to self-control as a social control.
The bonds that we have and the identity that we have created are internal aspects of social
control. External factors of social control can be taken from the hierarchical structures that our
societies have. Production and dominance/governmental hierarchy are both entrenched in
contemporary society and because of our reliance on production hierarchies and the lack of
another dominance/governmental hierarchy are possible reasons why they exhibit social control
over us. It is also possible that we enter the hierarchies with our networks still in tow and we
create new networks by means of social interaction within the hierarchy.
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Policy Implications
In understanding how social control and the importance of bonds and identity,
governments can implement policies that promote healthy family activities or workplace
policies. It would also be helpful in international politics as policy makers can analyze the
actions of leaders and intentions better.
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Works Cited
Losin, N. (Director). (2012). Alpha Male [Motion Picture].
Miller, M. R. (1995). The Dominance Hierarchy. Journal of Equine Veterinary Science, Vol.15, No.11, 467468.
Rubin, P. H. (2000). Hierarchy. Human Nature, Vol.11, No.3, 259-279.
Sage Publications. (n.d.). Key Idea: Hirschi's Social Bond/Social Control Theory. Retrieved April 8, 2013,
from Sage Publications Website: http://www.sagepub.com/upm-data/36812_5.pdf
Steiny, D. (2007). Book review: Identity and Control. Social Networks, Volume 29, Issue 4, October 07,
609-616.
van der Horst., F. P., & van der Veer, R. (2008). Loneliness in Infancy: Harry Harlow, John Bowlby and
Issues of Separation. Integr Psych Behav, 325-335.
Waal, F. M. (1998). Chimpanzee politics: power and sex among apes. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press.