Social Control, Conformity and Resistance

Sociology has a foundational disagreement about the relationship between the individual and society. It is the debate between structure and agency.

• Structure means society is made up of larger forces and institutions (the family, education, class, the economy) that exist outside the individual and shape how we think and behave. This is a top-down view: society makes us.
• Agency means individuals have the freedom to choose, interpret and act; through their everyday interaction they actually create and recreate society. This is a bottom-up view: we make society.

Structuralist views (society shapes the individual):

• Functionalism (Durkheim, Parsons): society is like a body whose institutions work together to maintain order. Through socialisation we internalise society's shared values (the value consensus), so we behave in ways society needs. The individual is largely passive — moulded by structure.
• Marxism (Marx, Althusser): the economic structure (the relationship between those who own the means of production and those who do not) shapes everything else — including our beliefs and behaviour. Althusser saw individuals as the products of structures (institutions and ideology), with little real freedom.

Interactionist / social action views (individuals create society):

• Max Weber argued sociology must understand the meanings people give to their actions (verstehen — interpretive understanding). Action, not structure, is the starting point.
• George Herbert Mead and symbolic interactionism see society as built up from countless interactions in which people interpret symbols and negotiate shared meanings.
• Erving Goffman's dramaturgy: social life is like a theatre. People are active performers engaged in impression management, presenting a 'self' on a 'front stage' and relaxing 'backstage'. We are not puppets of structure — we actively manage how others see us.

	Structuralist view	Interactionist / action view
Direction	Top-down (society → individual)	Bottom-up (individual → society)
The individual is...	Shaped, largely passive	Active, interpreting, creative
Key thinkers	Durkheim, Parsons, Marx, Althusser	Weber, Mead, Goffman
Order comes from...	Internalised structures/values	Negotiated, shared meanings

The resolution most A answers reach:* structure and agency are not opposites you must choose between. Anthony Giddens' structuration theory argues they are intertwined — structures shape what people do, but people's actions also reproduce (and can change) those structures. We are both shaped by society and shapers of it.

Conformity means behaving in line with social expectations (the norms and values of a group or society). Most people conform most of the time — but why? The syllabus identifies four explanations you must be able to define and illustrate.

Reason	What it means	Example
Sanctions	We conform to gain rewards and avoid punishments	A pupil works hard for praise/grades and to avoid detention
Social pressure	We conform to fit in with, and be accepted by, the group	A teenager copies a friendship group's clothes and slang
Self-interest	We conform when doing so benefits us personally	An employee follows company rules to keep their job and get promoted
Social exchange	We conform when the rewards of conforming outweigh the costs	Staying in a relationship/job because the benefits exceed the downsides

1. Sanctions. A sanction is a reaction that rewards conformity or punishes deviance. You must know two pairs:

• Positive sanctions (rewards: praise, a medal, a bonus) vs negative sanctions (punishments: a telling-off, a fine, prison).
• Formal sanctions (official: laws, courts, expulsion) vs informal sanctions (everyday: a frown, gossip, approval).

2. Social pressure (conformity to the group). Humans are deeply social and want acceptance. Pressure from peers can make people go along with the group even when they privately disagree. The classic illustration is Asch's conformity experiments, where individuals gave obviously wrong answers to match the majority — showing the power of group pressure. The peer group is therefore a powerful agency of informal social control.

3. Self-interest. Sometimes we conform simply because it pays. Following rules keeps us safe, employed and respected. On this view, conformity is a rational, calculated choice rather than blind obedience.

4. Social exchange. Social exchange theory treats social behaviour as a kind of trade: people weigh up the rewards and costs of an action and conform when the rewards are greater. Conformity is thus an ongoing cost-benefit calculation.

Notice how these explanations connect to the big debate: sanctions and consensus lean structural (society pressures us), whereas self-interest and social exchange give the individual agency (we choose, we calculate).

Beyond individual conformity, sociologists ask how social order (a relatively stable, predictable society) is maintained at the level of the whole society. Four mechanisms are central.

1. Power. Max Weber defined power as the ability to get others to do what you want, even against their will. He distinguished:

• Coercion — power exercised through force or its threat (people obey because they are made to).
• Authority — power seen as legitimate, so people obey willingly. Weber identified three types of legitimate authority:
  • Traditional authority — obeyed because 'it has always been so' (e.g. a monarch, a tribal chief).
  • Charismatic authority — obeyed because of the personal qualities of a leader (e.g. an inspirational political or religious figure).
  • Rational-legal authority — obeyed because of official rules and positions (e.g. a prime minister, a police officer, a manager).

2. Ideology (the Marxist mechanism). For Marxists, order is maintained by ideas, not just force. Ruling-class ideology spreads beliefs that make inequality seem normal and fair, producing false consciousness — the working class fail to see they are being exploited.

• Gramsci called the ruling class's cultural and moral leadership hegemony — domination by consent rather than force.
• Althusser distinguished Ideological State Apparatuses (ISAs) — education, media, religion, the family, which control through ideas — from Repressive State Apparatuses (RSAs).

3. Force (the repressive mechanism). When ideology is not enough, order is ultimately backed by force. Althusser's Repressive State Apparatuses (RSAs) — the police, the army, the courts, prisons — maintain order through coercion and the threat of punishment.

4. Consensus (the functionalist mechanism). For Durkheim, order rests on a value consensus — widely shared norms and values that bind people together. He called this shared moral framework the collective conscience. Socialisation and agencies of social control reproduce these shared values so that order feels natural rather than imposed.

The argument between perspectives: functionalists say order rests mainly on consensus (we agree); Marxists say it rests on ideology and force (we are controlled, sometimes without knowing it); Weber says legitimate power (authority) is key. Showing these mechanisms can be combined or contrasted is exactly the analysis Section B essays reward.

Deviance is behaviour that breaks the norms of a group or society and is likely to attract negative sanctions. Non-conformity is the broader failure to behave as expected. Sociologists offer several explanations, all of which assume deviance is socially produced, not just individual badness.

1. Subcultures and strain. A subculture is a group within society with its own distinctive norms and values, which may differ from the mainstream.

• A. K. Cohen explained delinquent subcultures through status frustration: working-class boys who fail to gain status in the mainstream (e.g. at school) form subcultures that invert mainstream values, awarding status for deviant acts instead.
• Robert Merton's strain theory (anomie): society sets cultural goals (e.g. material success) but does not give everyone equal legitimate means (e.g. good jobs) to reach them. This gap (strain) produces deviant 'adaptations' such as innovation (using illegitimate means, e.g. crime) and rebellion.

2. Under-socialisation. Some deviance is explained as the result of inadequate or failed socialisation — the individual was never properly taught society's norms and values, often blamed on the family. Handle with care: the New Right (e.g. Charles Murray's 'underclass' thesis) controversially links inadequate socialisation to an 'underclass' of welfare-dependent, deviant families. This is heavily criticised as 'blaming the victim' and ignoring structural causes like poverty.

3. Marginalisation. Groups pushed to the edges of society — with little power, status or stake in the system (e.g. the long-term unemployed, some minority groups) — may turn to deviance because they have little to lose and are excluded from legitimate routes to success.

4. Cultural deprivation. Some explanations argue that certain groups lack the 'right' norms, values, language and attitudes to succeed in mainstream institutions, leaving them more likely to deviate. Like under-socialisation, this is criticised for blaming the group rather than examining how institutions disadvantage them.

5. Social resistance. Not all deviance is failure — some is deliberate resistance to a dominant culture seen as unfair:

• The CCCS (Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, Birmingham) interpreted youth subcultures (e.g. punks, skinheads) as symbolic resistance by working-class youth against their position in a class society.
• Marxist and feminist writers see some deviance as resistance to ruling-class power or to patriarchy. On this view, breaking norms can be a political act, not just a failure to be socialised.

The three themes of this subtopic — social control, conformity and resistance — are really three angles on one question: how do individuals and society shape each other?

The functionalist story (order through consensus):

• Socialisation internalises shared values → people conform willingly → social control mostly works through agreement and informal sanctions → deviance is rare and even useful (Durkheim argued a little deviance helps clarify society's boundaries). Order rests on consensus.

The Marxist story (order through control):

• The economic structure shapes everything → conformity is manufactured through ideology (false consciousness, hegemony) and ultimately backed by force (RSAs) → 'social control' really serves the ruling class → much 'deviance' is actually resistance to an unjust system. Order rests on ideology + force.

The interactionist / action story (order through negotiation):

• Individuals have agency → they interpret rules and decide whether to conform → control is not automatic but negotiated in interaction → deviance and resistance show people are active, not passive. Order is constructed, not imposed.

Theme	Functionalism	Marxism	Interactionism
Why we conform	Shared values (consensus)	Ideology + force (control)	Choice/negotiation (agency)
Social control	Integrates society (good)	Serves the ruling class	Negotiated in interaction
Deviance/resistance	Rare; can be functional	Often resistance to oppression	Actively chosen, meaningful
Structure or agency?	Structure	Structure	Agency

How to use this in an essay. Whenever a Section B question touches conformity, control, power or deviance, you can build a two-sided argument by setting the structural view (functionalism/Marxism: society controls us) against the agency view (interactionism: we choose and resist), then judging with Giddens that the two interact. This single framework powers a huge proportion of Paper 1 essays.