996005 Interdisciplinary Seminar: Control (S) (WiSe 2011/2012)

On the eve of the BGHS Annual Seminar 2012: Control's Other Side, we
organize this class to discuss historical and modern mechanisms of
control.

The notion of social control entered sociological vocabulary in the
beginning of the 20th century as an answer to the classical question of
how social order is possible. Norms and sanctions were thought to be the
main power, constraining self-interests of the individuals, and, thus,
the basic mechanism of society's peaceful and routine self-regulation.
The further development of the concept was connected with Parsons's
functionalism, that approached control as a system's ability to react
against deviant behavior, that shakes its stability. Since that time
many concepts of the social sciences (such as human agency, norms,
power) have been revised and control from being an answer to the
question itself has become a notion to be explained.

Our seminar suggests to its participants to review the collection of
texts (including texts by Pierre Bourdieu, Michel de Certeau, Harvey
Sacks and Michel Foucault) which offer different approaches to the study
of social control, and to reflect on how we can put them to work in our
own research. The topics we plan to discuss through the readings
include: what it means to understand a rule, social production of law,
being deviant as being noticeable, everyday resistances, resources of
the European domination, political rationalities and governmental
technologies.