Social control is one of the most generally usedconcepts in sociology. It refers to the various

means used by a society to bring its recalcitrantmembers back into line. No society can exist with-out social control. Even a small group of peoplemeeting occasionally will have to develop theirmechanisms of control if the group is not to dissolvein a very short time. It goes without saying that theinstrumentalities of social control vary greatly fromone social situation to another. Opposition to theline in a business organization may mean what per-sonnel directors call a terminal interview; and in acriminal syndicate a terminal automobile ride.Methods of control vary with the purpose and char-acter of the group in question. In either case, controlmechanisms function to eliminate undesirable per-sonnel and (as it was put classically by KingChristophe of Haiti when he had every tenth man inhis forced-labor battalion executed) “to encouragethe others.”

The ultimate and, no doubt, the oldest means ofsocial control is physical violence. In the savagesociety of children it is still the major one. But evenin the politely operated societies of modern democ-racies the ultimate argument is violence. No statecan exist without a police force or its equivalent inarmed might. This ultimate violence may not beused frequently. There may be innumerable stepsbefore its application, in the way of warnings andreprimands. But if all the warnings are disregarded,even in so slight a matter as paying a traffic ticket,the last thing that will happen is that a couple ofcops show up at the door with handcuffs and aBlack Maria. Even the moderately courteous copwho hands out the initial traffic ticket is likely towear a gun—just in case. And even in England,where he does not in the normal course of events, hewill be issued one if the need arises.…

… In any functioning society violence is usedeconomically and as a last resort, with the merethreat of this ultimate violence sufficing for the day-

to-day exercise of social control. For our purposesin this argument, the most important matter tounderline is that nearly all men live in social situa-tions in which, if all other means of coercion fail,violence may be officially and legally used againstthem.

If the role of violence in social control is thusunderstood, it becomes clear that the, so to speak,penultimate means of coercion are more importantfor more people most of the time. While there is acertain uninspired sameness about the methods ofintimidation thought up by jurists and policemen,the less-than-violent instrumentalities of social con-trol show great variety and sometimes imagination.Next in line after the political and legal controls oneshould probably place economic pressure. Fewmeans of coercion are as effective as those thatthreaten one’s livelihood or profit. Both manage-ment and labor effectively use this threat as aninstrumentality of control in our society. But eco-nomic means of control are just as effective outsidethe institutions properly called the economy.Universities or churches use economic sanctionsjust as effectively in restraining their personnelfrom engaging in deviant behavior deemed by therespective authorities to go beyond the limits of theacceptable. It may not be actually illegal for a min-ister to seduce his organist, but the threat of beingbarred forever from the exercise of his professionwill be a much more effective control over thistemptation than the possible threat of going to jail.It is undoubtedly not illegal for a minister to speakhis mind on issues that the ecclesiastical bureaucra-cy would rather have buried in silence, but thechance of spending the rest of his life in minimallypaid rural parishes is a very powerful argumentindeed. Naturally such arguments are employedmore openly with economic institutions proper, butthe administration of economic sanctions in church-es or universities is not very different in its endresults from that used in the business world.

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The Meaning ofSocial Control

PETER BERGER

“The Meaning of Social Control,” by Peter Berger, reprinted from Invitation to Sociology: A Humanistic Perspective,1963,Anchor Books/Doubleday. Copyright © by Peter L. Berger. pp. 66–92. www. randomhouse.com.

2 The Meaning of Social Control

Where human beings live or work in compactgroups, in which they are personally known and towhich they are tied by feelings of personal loyalty(the kind that sociologists call primary groups),very potent and simultaneously very subtle mecha-nisms of control are constantly brought to bear uponthe actual or potential deviant. These are the mech-anisms of persuasion, ridicule, gossip and opprobri-um. It has been discovered that in group discussionsgoing on over a period of time individuals modifytheir originally held opinions to conform to thegroup norm, which corresponds to a kind of arith-metic mean of all the opinions represented in thegroup. Where this norm lies obviously depends onthe constituency of the group. For example, if youhave a group of twenty cannibals arguing over can-nibalism with one noncannibal, the chances are thatin the end he will come to see their point and, withjust a few face-saving reservations (concerning, say,the consumption of close relatives), will go overcompletely to the majority’s point of view. But ifyou have a group discussion between ten cannibalswho regard human flesh aged over sixty years as tootough for a cultivated palate and ten other cannibalswho fastidiously draw the line at fifty, the chancesare that the group will eventually agree on fifty-fiveas the age that divides the dëjeunerfrom the débriswhen it comes to sorting out prisoners. Such are thewonders of group dynamics. What lies at the bottomof this apparently inevitable pressure towards con-sensus is probably a profound human desire to beaccepted, presumably by whatever group is aroundto do the accepting. This desire can be manipulatedmost effectively, as is well known by group thera-pists, demagogues and other specialists in the fieldof consensus engineering.

Ridicule and gossip are potent instruments ofsocial control in primary groups of all sorts. Manysocieties use ridicule as one of the main controlsover children—the child conforms not for fear ofpunishment but in order not to be laughed at. Withinour own larger culture, “kidding” in this way hasbeen an important disciplinary measure amongSouthern Negroes. But most men have experiencedthe freezing fear of making oneself ridiculous insome social situation. Gossip, as hardly needs elab-oration, is especially effective in small communi-ties, where most people live their lives in a highdegree of social visibility and inspectability by theirneighbors. In such communities gossip is one of theprincipal channels of communication, essential forthe maintenance of the social fabric. Both ridiculeand gossip can be manipulated deliberately by any

intelligent person with access to their lines of trans-gression.

Finally, one of the most devastating means ofpunishment at the disposal of a human communityis to subject one of its members to systematicopprobrium and ostracism. It is somewhat ironic toreflect that this is a favorite control mechanism withgroups opposed on principle to the use of violence.An example of this would be “shunning” among theAmish Mennonites. An individual who breaks oneof the principal tabus of the group (for example, bygetting sexually involved with an outsider) is“shunned.” This means that, while permitted to con-tinue to work and live in the community, not a sin-gle person will speak to him ever. It is hard to imag-ine a more cruel punishment. But such are thewonders of pacifism.…

It is possible, then, to perceive oneself asstanding at the center (that is, at the point of maxi-mum pressure) of a set of concentric circles, eachrepresenting a system of social control. The otherring might well represent the legal and political sys-tem under which one is obligated to live. This is thesystem that, quite against one’s will, will tax one,draft one into the military, make one obey its innu-merable rules and regulations, if need be put one inprison, and in the last resort will kill one. One doesnot have to be a right-wing Republican to be per-turbed by the ever-increasing expansion of this sys-tem’s power into every conceivable aspect of one’slife. A salutary exercise would be to note down forthe span of a single week all the occasions, includ-ing fiscal ones, in which one came up against thedemands of the politico-legal system. The exercisecan be concluded by adding up the sum total offines and/or terms of imprisonment with disobedi-ence to the system might lead to. The consolidation,incidentally, with which one might recover fromthis exercise would consist of the recollection oflaw-enforcement agencies are normally corrupt andof only limited efficiency.

Another system of social control that exerts itspressures towards the solitary figure in the centerthat is of morality, custom and manners. Only themost urgent-seeming (to the authorities, that is)aspects of this system are endowed with legal sanc-tions. This does not mean, however, that one cansafely be immoral, eccentric or unmannered. At thispoint all the other instrumentalities of social controlgo into action. Immorality is punished by loss ofone’s job, eccentricity by the loss of one’s chancesof finding a new one, bad manners by remaining

The Meaning of Social Control 3

uninvited and uninvitable in the groups that respectwhat they consider good manners. Unemploymentand loneliness may be minor penalties compared tobeing dragged away by the cops, but they may notactually appear so to the individuals thus punished.Extreme defiance against the moresof our particu-lar society, which is quite sophisticated in its controlapparatus, may lead to yet another consequence—that of being defined, by common consent, as“sick.”…

But in addition to these broad coercive systemsthat every individual shares with vast numbers offellow controlees, there are other and less extensivecircles of control to which he is subjected. Hischoice of an occupation (or, often more accurately,the occupation in which he happens to end up)inevitably subordinates the individual to a variety ofcontrols, often stringent ones. There are the formalcontrols of licensing boards, professional organiza-tions and trade unions—in addition, of course, tothe formal requirements set by his particularemployers. Equally important are the informal con-trols imposed by colleagues and co-workers. Again,it is hardly necessary to elaborate overly on thispoint. The reader can construct his own examples—the physician who participates in a prepaid compre-hensive health insurance program, the undertakerwho advertises inexpensive funerals, the engineer inindustry who does not allow for planned obsoles-cence in his calculations, the minister who says thathe is not interested in the size of the membership ofhis church (or rather, the one who acts according-ly—they nearly all say so), the government bureau-crat who consistently spends less than his allottedbudget, the assembly-line worker who exceeds thenorms regarded as acceptable by his colleagues, andso on. Economic sanctions are, of course, the mostfrequent and effective ones in these instances—thephysician finds himself barred from all availablehospitals, the undertaker may be expelled from hisprofessional organization for “unethical conduct,”the engineer may have to volunteer for the PeaceCorps, as may the minister and the bureaucrat (in,say, New Guinea, where there is as yet no plannedobsolescence, where Christians are few and farbetween, and where the governmental machinery issmall enough to be relatively rational), and theassembly-line worker may find that all the defectiveparts of machinery in the entire plant have a way ofcongregating on his workbench. But the sanctionsof social exclusion, contempt and ridicule may bealmost as hard to bear. Each occupational role insociety, even in very humble jobs, carries with it a

code of conduct that is very hard indeed to defy.Adherence to this code is normally just as essentialfor one’s career in the occupation as technical com-petence or training.…

Finally, the human group in which one’s so-called private life occurs, that is the circle of one’sfamily and personal friends, also constitutes a con-trol system. It would be a grave error to assume thatthis is necessarily the weakest of them all justbecause it does not possess the formal means ofcoercion of some of the other control systems. It isin this circle that an individual normally has hismost important social ties. Disapproval, loss ofprestige, ridicule or contempt in this intimate grouphas far more serious psychological weight than thesame reactions encountered elsewhere. It may beeconomically disastrous if one’s boss finally con-cludes that one is a worthless nobody, but the psy-chological effect of such a judgment is incompara-bly more devastating if one discovers that one’swife has arrived at the same conclusion. What ismore, the pressures of this most intimate controlsystem can be applied at those times when one isleast prepared for them. At one’s job one is usuallyin a better position to embrace oneself, to be onone’s guard and to pretend than one is at home.Contemporary American “familism,” a set of valuesthat strongly emphasizes the home as a part ofrefuge from the tensions of the world and of person-al fulfillment, contributes effectively to this controlsystem. The man who is at least relatively preparedpsychologically to give battle in his office is willingto do almost anything to preserve the precariousharmony of his family life. Last but not least, thesocial control of what German sociologists havecalled the “sphere of the intimate” is particularlypowerful because of the very factors that have goneinto its construction in the individual’s biography. Aman chooses a wife and a good friend in acts ofessential self-definition. His most intimate relation-ships are those that he must count upon to sustainthe most important elements of his self-image. Torisk, therefore, the disintegration of these relation-ships means to risk losing himself in total way. It isno wonder then that many an office despot prompt-ly obeys his wife and cringes before the raised eye-brows of his friends.

If we return once more to the picture of an indi-vidual located at the center of a set of concentric cir-cles, each one representing a system of social con-trol, we can understand a little better that location insociety means to locate oneself with regard to manyforces that constrain and coerce one. The individual

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who, thinking consecutively of all the people he isin a position to have to please, from the Collector ofInternal Revenue to his mother-in-law, gets the ideathat all of society sits right on top of him had betternot dismiss that idea as a momentary neuroticderangement. The sociologist, at any rate, is likelyto strengthen him in this conception, no matter whatother counselors may tell him to snap out of it.

The sanctions of society are able at eachmoment of existence to isolate us among our fellowmen, to subject us to ridicule, to deprive us of oursustenance and our liberty, and in the last resort todeprive us of life itself. The law and the morality of

society can produce elaborate justifications for eachone of these sanctions, and most of our fellow menwill approve if they are used against us in punish-ment for our deviance. Finally, we are located insociety not only in space but in time. Our society isa historical entity that extends temporally beyondany individual biography. Society antedates us andit will survive us. It was there before we were bornand it will be there after we are dead. Our lives arebut episodes in its majestic march through time. Insum, society is the walls of our imprisonmentin history.