Mechanisms of social control PDF

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There are two theories about the impact of the media on the population: one considers that mass communication controls and manipulates human beings; the other believes that people are aware of what is happening around them and that they can guess what others want from them and be able to resist psyc...

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MECHANISMS OF SOCIAL CONTROL

Introduction When the mass media did not exist, social control and manipulation, according to Noam Chomsky, was established by the family. Later two great institutions arose that would affect the public opinion: the church and the police (all this following Chomsky). The first recommended and the second prohibited. In parallel, these two institutions continue to carry out their control work today together with the mass media. The mechanisms that society has to control itself are very varied, among others, there are the different institutions that make it up and their internal regulations, in a more diffuse way the social norms that are followed by habit and are implicit in the culture appear ; for example: religion, which presents mystical norms; the laws that derive from the rule of law; the police and the army; as well as the mass media that bombard with ideas and cause ordinary consensus to be established between people. Mechanisms of collective manipulation: indoctrination Indoctrination is a set of educational and propaganda measures and practices used by the dominant social elites (political or religious), as a means of social control that is neither explicit nor necessarily coercive, but influential. A common phenomenon to that of collective manipulation is what has been called Orwell's problem, this author studies the mechanisms that regimes use to maintain control of opinions among their population, with the intention that everyone has more or more opinions. less in the same way (as it suits the state). The party, assemblies, bulletins, newspapers, television, interviews with intellectuals, etc., have the function of spreading certain ideas and criticizing those contrary to the ruling regime. It is through collective opinions and agreements that people take actions against public policies, for this reason the State is interested in manipulating opinion to have a more lasting and secure existence. Another phenomenon coupled with the above is what is called resistance to indoctrination, which is the effort of people to avoid succumbing to the ideas that are imposed on them. Psychological manipulation through the media There are two theories about the impact of the media on the population: one considers that mass communication controls and manipulates human beings; the other believes that people are aware of what is happening around them and that they can guess what others want from them and be able to resist psychological manipulation. For Foucault (2009), power constitutes a relationship between resistance and influence. In this sense, the mass media tend to dominate the population and people to resist this exercise of power, intuit it and reject it. The achievement of the media would be obtained by annihilating the subjects, while

their achievement would be constituted by absolute freedom. Let's think: Are we totally free? Do we consume products because we want to? What indoctrinations have the mass media gestated in us during the time we have been listening to them? For Poster (1990), the panopticon, created in his time by Jeremy Bentham, has a new version, that of the cyberspace panopticon. In order for people to confirm who they are, the Internet becomes an instrument of selection, inclusion and separation at the service of business interests. For his part, Thomas Mathiesen speaks of the synoptic, which refers to the mass media, where the reverse occurs, since consumers observe the world, enraptured by its splendors; coercion is no longer useful for them to buy, since the modern is now seduction; Today's society cannot be conceived without a voracious appetite for the population to consume. The media manufacture common sense and this helps broad sectors of the population understand each other under the same particular scheme, thanks to the consensus that nurtures the mass man. Manipulation strategies According to Chomsky, there are several manipulation strategies that the government and businessmen use through the mass media to have the population dominated. The most important ones are described below: Distraction Bombarding the population with announcements of situations that are not important, with the aim of keeping them entertained to avoid directing their energies towards fundamental situations. The idea of this technique is based on keeping the population busy with trivial matters, such as the price of eggs, so that they are not interested in other subjects. Create problems artificially A controllable problem is created, for example, the use of weapons is allowed, which increases violence in the streets; as an effect, people ask for the intervention of the police; in response, the government creates more police posts, strata and commands. The people who ask for the solution do not know that their reaction was sought, from the beginning, by the government. The strategy of gradualism The government tends to avoid using blunt measures, as doing so would provoke a revolution. So, foresee long-term actions and only apply some measures at the beginning, that way it does not cause a real social impact. As an example of the above, since 1970 there has been a transition from the extensive welfare state to the minimal welfare state, almost without the generations perceiving it. Use Parent-Child language The government has learned for many years that if you speak to the population in a safe and protective tone, the recipients of your speeches will adopt a child's attitude and stop thinking for themselves. This communicative style tries to

promote that the responses and behaviors of the recipients are childish, so that there is no rebellion against the government. Focus on emotions This action seeks to evoke the moving part of people to neutralize their rational part. Governments usually show the population the anguished faces of the relatives of the victims of some catastrophe, the tears produced by economic crises, the consequences of a hurricane, etc ... shortly before taking serious action. Make the public feel that you have to be simple Domain is guaranteed when advertisements make self-thinkers look vain. Anyone who tries to give an opinion on aspects that belongs to a class of intellectuals is ridiculed, in order to strengthen the idea that people should not think on their own. Reinforce self-blame This strategy aims to introduce the idea that everyone has what they deserve, it is a way to avoid blaming governments for social problems. People are not very motivated to rebel if they consider that they are the cause of their own misfortune. Social repression: punishment as a control mechanism Social repression can be defined as the governmental impediment for citizens to express their freedom through political actions that could threaten the dominant regime; these types of actions are accompanied by legal or informal violence. Story about social repression and punishment In the Middle Ages torture was used, which consisted of a kind of public proclamation of the prisoner to confess his crimes. It was considered, at that time, that the damage of the offenders was not towards society, but towards the sovereign, the prisoner had to express his repentance publicly to be forgiven by the nobleman of his region. In many films of the Middle Ages public whipping is appreciated, as in The Prince and the Pauper (1882), by Mark Twain. The torture began to disappear as the seventeenth century entered, because at the moments when the prisoners were whipped, disturbances occurred, which instead of generating fear, originated desires for revenge towards the sovereign, as can be seen in the film Brave Heart (1995 ), which starred, Mel Gibson. With the arrival of the punishment, the body ceases to be the focus of attention and is replaced by the soul of the prisoner. In addition, a space is opened to talk about the phenomena of the offender, for example, their instincts and maladjustments; This will enrich the penal system with the opinions of various specialists, including psychiatrists and psychologists. Punishment In the Age of Enlightenment, the great illustrated criticize the use of torture as unnatural mechanisms and try to advise the penal system of new ways of treating detainees. This new age produces punishment.

The rules of this new system that began in the 18th century are six: 1. Rule of the greatest harm: The punishment pretends that the prisoner knows that the action he carried out actually has a worse consequence, compared to the benefit he obtained by taking it. 2. Rule of undesirability: Punishment should be perceived by civil society as something bad, no one should want to suffer it. 3. Rule of side effects: The punishment must have repercussions beyond the offender, in such a way that it influences the population to prevent them from committing a crime. 4. Rule of absolute certainty: The crime cannot go unpunished, for this reason the justice must also ensure that the police discover the criminals and that they pay their debt to society. 5. Rule of common truth: You must find out who and how committed the crime to avoid errors in the administration of justice. 6. Rule of optimal specificity: A specific punishment must correspond to each offense. With this stage the romantic idea of the offender ends, punishment represents a way of teaching him to function in society (it is not revenge against them); furthermore, the penalties should be temporary as much as possible - not permanent to ensure that the prisoner reintegrates himself into society and so that the State spends only what is necessary on him. Discipline After the era of punishment comes the era of discipline, which consists of a set of techniques to achieve the docility of citizens and which is applied to architecture, the army, schools and hospitals. This new control system is simple, but effective, and is based on three elements: the design of the building, the disciplinary punishment and the examination. Building layout The construction of buildings changes with the Contemporary Age, palaces are built to observe people (not only to protect themselves from them); prisons to monitor and punish inmates (not just to lock them up); hospitals to control the discipline of doctors and patients (not just to house the sick). On the other hand, the school is designed so that the room can be observed at any time by those in charge of the institution, there are no longer remote, locked or cloistered rooms, now they are visible through windows and small windows in the doors. Disciplinary punishment In all disciplinary systems there are sanctions, these, like fines, have the power to make people comply with the rules. Thanks to these disciplinary measures, people try to do what everyone does because the authority stipulates it.

Periodic examination The exam also helps discipline as it represents an intervention to know the level of retention, skills or the specific situation of a person's performance. The exam is a disciplinary technique of the Modern Age (as it was little used in the Middle Ages or Old). The panopticon The Panopticon is a scheme designed by Jeremy Bentham for modern prisons with the purpose that prisoners are permanently guarded. The idea that this philosopher came up with was that the guards could see what the prisoners were doing from a turret, windows or by the design of the cells. The objective, with this scheme, is not just to watch, it is also to create a feeling in the prisoner that he is permanently guarded, it is a permanent subjugation exercised by the guards. The panopticon also serves to experiment with them, to understand their processes, alliances, manipulations, riots, aggressions, etc. Prison as a legal system: its functions Prison is currently the most widespread and used way to punish lawbreakers, it is based on the idea that freedom is a good and its deprivation a punishment; Furthermore, it tries to punish the offender, but without damaging his body. This penal system considers that time in prison should be used to achieve social rehabilitation, teaching the inmate to be a decent person. Foucault narrates about the emergence of prisons: The prison-form pre-exists its systematic use in criminal laws. It has been established outside the judicial apparatus, when the procedures to distribute individuals, fix and distribute them spatially, classify them, obtain from them the maximum time and maximum forces, were elaborated, through the entire social body, educate their body, codify their continuous behavior, keep them in clear visibility, form around them a whole apparatus of observation, recording and notations, building on them a knowledge that accumulates and is centralized. History of the prison In the Old Age there were already custodial sentences that were purged in primitive prisons, they were usually humid, cold and dark (like those seen in movies about that time). In Babylon, prisons were known as the Lake of Lions, because prisoners were thrown into cisterns -with a certain amount of water-; they hardly survived, as they were immobilized hand and foot and without food (Del Pont K., 1974). In Egypt, the prisoners went to carry out compulsory work in the houses of their masters, which benefited the large landowners who literally took justice into their hands, at the same time the pharaonic officials turned a blind eye ( Torallas Tovar & Pérez Martín, 2003). In Greece, the prison was more like the one used today in our country; It was divided into three areas, an area to protect the offender before sentencing, a prison for convicted criminals - but not dangerous ones - and another for criminals of serious violations of the law. In the Athens of the 4th century BC, the prison consisted of a public building located near the city -specifically used for

this function-; the prisoners were in a spacious place (as their relatives could visit them in their own cells), they had a bathroom and they were given regular meals; In the event that they were sentenced to capital punishment, the sanction was applied in the prisoner's own room, which was usually the imposition of drinking hemlock15 (Riaño Rufilanchas , 2003). In the Middle Ages, the penalty based on deprivation of liberty decreased, on the contrary, corporal penalties increased, such as torture, which included whipping and dismemberment of the body (Foucault, 2009); the sentenced, before being executed were confined in dungeons, towers or dungeons (these would be equivalent to prison, but only until the punishment was applied). In the Age of Enlightenment, the participation of many illustrated people who criticized the penal system and helped to bring about a change from torture to prison stands out. As Foucault (2009) refers, the advent of the modern prison began in the 19th century, thanks to the progress of the ideas that society reached at that time. Principles or functions of the prison According to De León Villalba (2003), the main functions of the prison are seven: Principle of correction The fundamental objective of the prison is to return to society an individual who is morally changed and capable of a good and honest life. Classification principle A prison must have cells according to the crime committed, the process in which the accused is found, his gender and the degree of progress in the rehabilitation. Principle of modulation of penalties The penalties are not invariable, they can be modified according to the good behavior, age and specific characteristics of the offenders. Work principle The inmate has the right to work, and this must be the fundamental axis to transform him into a useful person, capable of acting with full responsibility when he leaves the prison. Principle of education The defendant must be educated for two reasons: because he has the right to education despite being in prison, and because it is the best way to assure society that he will not commit a crime again. The prison regime The prison regime is a place of perdition because in many prisons in the country there is more aggressiveness, vices, injustices and repression than there is outside of them. The problem with many prisons is that they are vice schools where inmates perfect their criminal knowledge, know other ways of breaking the law and

continuing to harm society. It is important that the prison system improves so that society becomes safer. Also, because the State collects many taxes for this purpose and it is its obligation to ensure that society lives calmer. Likewise, it is important that prisons, their operational security, their internal programs are expanded; Giving inmates a better quality of life could lead to better behavior when leaving. Many people believe that prison riots are due to mistreatment of defendants by guards, if so, then it is important to better train the people who assist them on a daily basis. Validity of the standard If the sanctions are not adequate enough, there is a risk that the prisoner, when he leaves prison, will reoffend; generating, as a consequence, that social peace is affected and life in society is more insecure. It is the obligation of the State to ensure the tranquility of its citizens, for which it is required that the rules be respected through penalties corresponding to the crime; If this correspondence is not achieved, the criminals will hold a later grudge towards society. Perhaps in a few years crime will decrease thanks to the increase in an education that prioritizes moral literacy, as well as the existence of greater job opportunities that prevent transgressions of the law, given the lack of economic income. Principle of control of detention Prisoners must have specialized personnel to monitor and support them, in addition to being surrounded by people with proven morals and probity. Principle of attached institutions The other social institutions may intervene in different ways to ensure that the detainee gradually achieves his readjustment. Social rehabilitation: Fact or myth? The time that the prisoner spends in seclusion is not intended as a social revenge to reciprocate with the people he harmed; Nor does it represent a way to prevent him from committing a crime again; Its ultimate goal is that the person is rehabilitated through education and training, so that when they graduate they have a better life, which also guarantees society to have a good citizen....