Social Control And Deviance

9 Pages 2298 Words

, in contrast, stress that a particular group dominates each society and that the basic purpose of social control is to maintain the current power arrangements. Consequently, society is made up not of groups in balance, but rather of competing groups uneasily held together. The group that holds power must always fend off groups that desire to replace it and take over the society themselves. When another group does gain power, it, too, will immediately try to neutralize competing groups. Some groups are much more ruthless than others; for example, before World War II, the Nazis in Germany and the Communists in the Soviet Union systematically eliminated individuals and groups they deemed a threat to their vision of the ideal society. Other dominant groups may be less ruthless, but they, too, are committed to maintaining power.

In American society, for example, although political power is not as naked as it is in dictatorships, conflict theorists note that an elite group of wealthy, white males maintains power by working behind the scenes to control the three branches of government (Domhoff, 1983, 187 - 192). These men make certain that their interests are represented in the day-to-day decisions of Congress, by the nominees to the United States Supreme Court, and by the presidential candidates of the two major political parties. This, it is this group's views of capital and property, the basis of their power, that are represented in the laws of society. This means that official deviance - the statistics on victims, lawbreakers, and the outcomes of criminal investigations and sentencing - centers on maintaining their interests (Domhoff, 1990, 227).

Thus, conflict theorists stress, the state's machinery of social control represents the interests of the wealthy and powerful (Hall, 142). It is this group that determines the basic laws whose enforcement is essential to preserving its own power. Other norms, such as those that g...