Use of a Dramaturgical Perspective Enhances Our Knowledge of Social Control - Coursework Example

The mechanisms and processes that regulate behaviour of the units of any given society, i.e, individuals or defined groups and thereby, serve in ensuring conformity and ascertaining compliances to the society specific rules and regulations are referred to as social control (Ritzer, 2007). Sociological academic pursuits have devoted significant lengths of research in determining the mechanism behind the process of social control. The quest for understanding what exactly motivates individuals or groups to abide by certain standards has consequently been crucial and the resulting perspectives which probe into or attempt to analyse this particular aspect of human behaviour have constituted a bulk of the sociological literature. In fact this pursuit has caused a ramification of sociological theory with Social Control Theory being gradually formed as a distinct school over the course of the still on-going journey that the quest for answers to questions like whether establishing sets of rules and regulations are enough to ensure conformity or what factors determine the extent of conformity to standards that is exhibited by any sociological unit (Goffman, 2001). The objective of the present endeavour is to describe how the advent and adoption of dramaturgical perspectives can enhance the knowledge and understanding of the social control mechanisms. In what follows, first we proceed to enhance our understanding of what the basic questions are for sociologists in the field of social control through initiating a brief discussion of the basic theories of social control. Then the concept of dramaturgy and its implications for interpretations and the scope of reiterations of human behaviour is analysed. Thus armed thereon with a better understanding of the context as well as the tool, we enter a discussion that undertakes pointing out the particular benefits as well as possible critiques of dramaturgy as a tool that facilitates a better comprehension and a significantly new perspective of social control, before concluding with a brief summary of the essay. The theoretical pursuits of comprehending the motivations for social units responding to regulations and other forms of control stemmed from and morphed into a separate discipline of sociological theory with the publication of “Social Control” by Edward A. Ross in 1901 which asserted that greater extent of control on behaviour was exercised by the formed system of beliefs rather than any specific set of laws or legislations, irrespective of the process of formation or exact form assumed by the beliefs (Ross, 1901). The various forms of social control are primarily justified as providential arrangements that prevent any society from befalling into possible states of anarchic disorder stemming from deviant behaviour that responds to the incentives which are lucrative and thus the objective of social controls is to ensure that motivations for conformity become stronger than the incentives that motivate deviance (Pfhol, 1994). The social control theorists posit that the greater the degree of commitment of a person to traditional or conventional ideals and pursuits and thus greater the attachment to the contextual social subgroups such as family, friends or associates, lesser is the likelihood of such a person acting so as to violate rules of the society specific to him/her. Thus the purpose of the control mechanism in essence is to enhance the degree to which an individual is committed to such norms, conventions and social traditions (Adler & Adler, 1987). Therefore any phenomenon that provides effective incentives to social units to conform in behavioural terms to the norms and traditions of the given community can be interpreted as a social control mechanism. However, social control has also been alternatively interpreted in a broad sense as certain mechanisms devised to enforce regulations upon members of a society. Social control according to such views enforces notions of deviance through defining certain codes of conduct, rules, laws and thereby enforcing senses of right or wrong and in a particular sense, morality (Ritzer, 2007). Therefore, theoretically, social control is perceived as a process or mechanism that makes members of any society internalise certain moral codes and establishes a system of incentives and disincentives to dissuade deviance. To understand how exactly such processes influence human behaviour and why certain mechanisms achieve conformity while others fail and require supplements it is important to perceive the contextual responses of human behaviour in depth. And it is due to this very fact that the significance of dramaturgical perspectives in furthering the present understanding of social control emerges. Dramaturgy in its present state is one of the most useful conceptual tools that is utilised for analytically studying, justifying, evaluating and predicting human behaviour contextually against the backdrop of any given society. Broadly, dramaturgy can be interpreted as an analytical perspective that posits social life to resemble theatre or more appropriately, drama where each unit of society is an independent performer or actor trying to portray itself as some particular character or creating an idea of itself during the process of interactions (Welsh, 1990). Thus, from a dramaturgical perspective individual identity is by no means stable, static or independent but rather is essentially dynamic and continually re-morphed or reinforced in each interaction depending upon whether the identity that any individual attempts to project remains the same or changes over time or place or due to some other form of contextual variety. Though the philosophical notion of society being a stage to social units which were in essence performers and the implied corollary of individual identity being illusory to greater extents than perceived have existed in literature for centuries, the first significant contribution to the process of adoption of these ideas into mainstream theory initiated with the literary critic Kenneth Burke’s development of the “Dramatistic” approach to social behaviour and interactions in the 1930’s. In the book entitled “permanence and change” (1935)1, Burke opined that human communications and interactions in society are very similar in character to process of communications of actors attempting to portray certain roles in theatrical performances or plays. Burke, like the proponents of theories of symbolic interactionism, Meade and Horton, argued against modelling human behaviour using mechanistic frameworks accusing these to be inadequate as such models failed to incorporate the fact that human actions were motivated by illustrative and ‘dramatist’ purposes and that such objective actions had strong subjective significance (Burke, 1935). However, in spite of Burke further developing his ideas in “A Grammar of Motives” (1945)2 and “A Rhetoric of Motives” (1950)3, they lingered outside the periphery of conventional sociological research and academic pursuits until authors like Hugh Duncan and Erving Goffman proceeded to derive from these ideas and morph them into what is now known as dramaturgy in the mid 1950s and 1960s. Particularly, the publication of Goffman’s “The Presentation of the Self In Everyday Life” in 1959 signified the birth of dramaturgical sociology as a ramification of theoretical sociological thought, and for the first time, the notion that a possible approach to observe and understand social dynamics was to consider it as a conglomeration of continuous dramatic performances entered mainstream theoretical social science. Goffman explored the different processes particular to humans of gauging the responses to previous behaviour and interpreting the feedback and modifying the same in accordance to generate some particular impression of an identity or a mood or an occasion which were intended to be catered to fellow humans who were for that individual at that point of time the audience as a genuine depiction of that social identity or mood or occasion (Goffman, 1959). It was argued that such portrayals were intended to create a sense of a certain social reality and specific impressions with certain objectives. Apart from the importance of effective formalization of the dramaturgic analytical framework, Goffman’s work was significantly noteworthy and groundbreaking in that it pointed out the differences in subjective intentions and objective behavior. It was exhibited that human’s often portray characters and implied intentions that differ from the true intentions. The impressions generated of the motives were different than those that motivated the portrayal of the particular character (Ritzer, 2007). The advent of dramaturgical perspectives in sociology though significantly indebted to the philosophical environment of dramatism and symbolic interactionism, in effect allowed enhanced perception of society and the dynamics of fraudulent and manipulative behavior and interactions with humans being studied as amoral actors portraying characters in accordance to their obejectives and thereby portraying objectives that were different in character to the true objectives hidden beneath the surface of the performed character. Though perfidious behavioural traits were not something new, dramaturgical analysis studied it as the norm or the trait of society albeit in a refined form thereby enhancing the perspectives on deviance and serving as an additional perspective on social control (Benford & Hunt, 1992).Thus it is in this aspect that the importance of dramaturgical perspectives for social control theory emerges. Dramaturgical perspectives analysed a society characterized by mass mutual -exploitation, conflicting socio-political interests so that each individual appeared actually to be a stranger to all others, and the goals pursued are more often exclusive of others and separated by incentives than not. Evidently, perspectives on such social interactions strongly enhance perceptions about the motivations for deviance, and thus facilitate better understanding of social control. The direct result was that of traditionally used long-standing social control practices were replaced by advanced scientific variants. Common members of society had traditionally been controlled by social constructs that represented domination and signified certain ‘others’. Institutionally established power relations such as the religious control of the church, monetary power of the business or elite class, physical power of the male etc had led to defined states of existence and control manifest in distinctions of gender, race, class, religion etc. In the present day market oriented modern mass society, such tactics fail particularly in the absence of significant ‘others’ with social ideals converging towards notions of equity and justice and equal treatment. Utilizing moral or religious control to motivate consumer purchases is not very fruitful, as is not the utilization of force to prevent deviant workers from abandoning work (Benford & Hunt, 1992). However, the extent of control wielded by economic power has superseded all alternative means and the game of persuasion is one of essentially strategically outcompeting rival economic power wielders in most major fields of life. Dramaturgical perspectives provide crucial insights to such strategic interactions and enable effective interpretations of behaviour in these cases and thus better allow the student of sociology along with the rival strategist to perceive the possible intentions that motivate some particular action or behaviour of an individual (Ritzer, 2007). Advent of dramaturgical perspectives has in fact enabled better understanding of relative efficacy of social control mechanisms and in fact led to incorporation of psychology of influencing and persuasion along with technological advancements in the form of electronics coupled with theatrical elements to effectively influence behaviour. These are utilized in tandem to create new selves and re-establish orders in society where the senses of selves and minds in context to society had erstwhile been conceived by open mutual social interactions between individuals (Benford & Hunt, 1992). Thus what emerges is that with the development of dramaturgy perspectives as a analytical route to study human behaviour in the contexts of different societies, analysing the motivations and incentives of deviance or non-conformity have become easier and more importantly, an analytical framework to study the dynamics of human interactions is now available and thus understanding social control theoretically as well as practical utilisations of it have been greatly facilitated. References: Adler, P., Adler, P. (1987) Everyday Life Sociology. Ann Rev Sociol, 13, 217-35 Benford, S., Hunt, S. (1992) Dramaturgy and Social Movements: The Social Construction and Communication of Power. Sociological Inquiry Vol. 2. No. 1. Goffmann, E., (2001) Contemporary Sociological Theory, New York, New York. Peter Lang Publishing Inc Pfohl, S., (1994) "Images of Deviance and Social Control: A Sociological History", McGraw-Hill Ritzer, G., (2007) Contemporary Sociological Theory and Its Classical Roots: The Basics. New York, New York. McGraw-Hill. Welsh, J. (1990) Dramaturgical Analysis and Societal Critique, Piscataway, New Jersey. Transaction Publishers. Read More