Personality and Social Control

I've been reading Tomatsu Shibutani's Society and Personality (1961) that I picked up from a pile of "Free, Take One!" books in the sociology graduate lab (along with A Poetic for Sociology which is also very interesting). There are some bits I found interesting in the first 100 or so pages that I'd like to crystallize here.

Shibutani, first off, is writing from a era 45 years ago. I've noticed much of his psychological theory comes directly from Freudian psychoanalysis, which, much like Darwin's evolutionary theory, is deep and advanced, yet it lacks much of the knowledge and understanding of a century of neurological and psychological research. It shows elements of phallocentrism in that his focus is on how 'men' behave and how 'he' feels about 'himself'. Although he occasionally bends to discuss how an 'organism' may act under certain stimulus, much of Shibutani's discussion seems to focus on the male sex of humans. Excusing a lack of 45 years of knowledge and an obvious lack of training on how to write for a neutral audience, Shibutani seems to detail the dynamics of human groups in modern society very well. I would like focus first on his concept of social control.

The term 'social control,' Shibutani asserts, is misunderstood, and I certainly agree. The word 'control' connotes that some conscious entity is exercising it's power over another conscious entity. However, the version of social control detailed in Shibutani's explanation is, instead, a willful act of conforming to social norms for the benefit of completing some task or to the benefit of the actor involved. Shibutani likes to use the analogy of football a lot, but I suck at sports analogies.

Shibutani's concept of social control is an abstract set of rules that allows the continued concerted cooperation of independent agents. This means that a bunch of people organize for some purpose, making dinner for a party, winning a football game, raising a barn, tipping over a van in a riot, or pinning down a friend to tickle them until they cry. Social control are the limits or boundaries of behavior that still allow the action of the group to complete the task. That is, if you want to pass a class, you have to do enough of the homework, do well enough on the tests, and go to enough class sessions. The control is embedded within the actors will to complete the task and understanding of the role the actor assumes.

The concept of self also makes an appearance here, Shibutani refers to it as self-consciousness. There are many occasions in which we are not self-conscious at all, such as when we are in a dark theatre absorbed in an exciting film, or engage in a fantastic novel. We simply don't care about our appearance to others.