Social Formation

A Marxist concept, largely synonymous with "society", which refers to the institutional context which provides the conditions of existence of the mode of production. The term was devised by the structuralist Marxist Louis. Alehouse as a substitute for society, because he thought that the latter was too strongly marked by what re regarded as pre-Marxist humanist conceptions of social life as being (ultimately) the product of individual human beings. For this reason, its presence in a text normally indicates that the author works with a structuralist conception of social life, according to which social relations as such-rather than their bears- are what determine what happens within societies. (It is worth nothing that Marx himself rarely used the term) For Althusser, a social formation is a complex of concrete economic, political and ideological relations, bound together and given their particular character as capitalist, feudal, or whatever by the fact that the economic relations are, in the words, determinant in the last instance, many of those continue to use the term now reject this residual reductionism.

Social Crime

Crime is sometimes regarded as social when it presents a conscious challenge to a prevailing social order and its values. Example cited by Marxist historians include forms of popular action and popular customs in early mordern England (including poaching, wood theft, food riots and smuggling which were criminalized by the ruling class, but were not regarded as blameworthy, either by those committing them, or by the communities from which they came. The concept is contraversial but des point to the fact that there may not be consensus as to which consitutes a criminal act.

Social Control

A term widely used in sociology to refer to the social processes by which the behaviour of individuals or groups is regulated. Since all societies have norms and rules governing conduct (a society without some such norms is inconceivable) all equally have some mechanisms for ensuring conformity to those norms and for dealing with deviance. Social control is consequentyly a pervasive feature of society, of interest to a broad range of sociologists having differing theoretical persuasions and sunstantive interest, and not just to sociologists of deviance. The sociological issue is not the existence of social control, but determining its presice nature, and identifying the mechanisms at work in particular social contexts. By whom is control exercised? What techniques of control are employed? How far can and do individuals or groups resist process of social control? In whose interests does control operate? The answer to such questions vary greatly. Normative functionalists tend to suggest that social control is of value to society as a whole, since it is essential to the maintenance of social order: other point to the sectional interests that are served ub the process of social control, emphasizing the lack of normative consensus, the differences in power that are involved, and the close linkage between power and control. Analyses of the main forms of social control differ. A common distinction is between represive or constraint and the softer ideological forms of control that operate through the shaping of ideas, values and attitutes. The former techniques are particularly characteristic of institutions such as the police and the military, the latter of institutions such as the mass media. The best recent discussions of the topic are stanley Cohen's Visions of Social Control (1988) and jack P. Gibb's Control " Sociology's Central Notion (1989). See also criminology. Criminology, Feminist; Foucault, Michel; Sanction; Trust and Distrust.

SOCIOLOGY

The origin of the word sociology from the latin word socius (companion) and the greek word ology (study of) indicates its nature as a hybrid discipline that can never aspire to the status of a social science of a coherant body of knowledge. The discipline itself has an ambivalent genealogy and a controversial recent history as the newest of the social sciences to establish itself in universities in the English speaking world. In Britain, for example, this did not happened ona large scale until the 1960s, when sociology departments were oftern accused of instigating students unrest

Sociology is a recently developed academic disciple, particularly popular in the United States, based upon the tenet that all animal and human behavior is ultimately dependent upon genetic encoding molded evolutionary history by the process of selection. This all- encompassing theme, according as it does with many common-sense assertions about human nature, is sufficient to have attracted an enormous quantity of media attention. The spotlight has focused particularly on its most well-known popularizing authors: Edward O Wilson, who coined the term itself in his Sociobiology; The new synthesis and Richard Dawkins, author of the Selfish Gene. Wilson an American biologist and authority on ant behaviour, also provided the first definition of the social behaviour.

In the mid of 1970s sociobiolgy brought together into a supposedly coherent theoritical synthesis the work of previous authors on the relationship between animal and human behaviour, including Konrad Lorenz, Robert Ardrey, and Desmong Morris. It was anticipated, at least by Wilson, that all social and biological sciences would eventually be regarded merely as branches of sociobiology. Unsurprisingly, many sociologists and anthropologists have been deeply suspicious of the ultimately all encompassing claims of this synthesis, and have drawn attention to the enormous cultural diversity of human societies -a diversity which challenges the frequently androcentric and ethnocentric assumptions of much sociobiological writing. For example, serious questions have been raised by Marshall Sahlins concerneing the theoritical adequacy of sociobiology, and its claims to be respectable academic disciplein in its own right. Many social scientists have challenged its use of scientific evidence. Others have linked the emrgence of sociobiolgy in the Unites States to a conservative backlash against the radicalism of the 1960s.

The general response of sociobiologists to these criticisms has been gradually to admit more that is environmental into their analytical framework, whilst still retaining an adherence to the ultimate determining effect of biology, at least in any aspect of behaviour attributed with evolutionary significance. Wilson for example has more recently argued that gens hold culture ona long leash. Whilst some academic abalysis has become relatively sophisticated and complex, the level at which much sociobiologists argument in expressed remains alarmingly reductionist.

SOCIOLOGY

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