Social control revisited

• Date: 21 December 2010
• Published date: 21 December 2010
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/S1521-6136(2010)0000015003
• Pages: 1-16
• Author: James J. Chriss

SOCIAL CONTROL REVISITED

James J. Chriss

INTRODUCTION

Back in 2005 lawyers for the Milwaukee school board decided to exclude

Viagra and similar erectile dysfunction (ED) drugs from health coverage for

the teachers’ union because, well, they were simply too expensive.

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And

besides, so the school board explained, such drugs are used primarily for

recreational sex and are not a medical necessity.

However, five years later representatives of the Milwaukee teachers’ union

began pushing once again for inclusion of Viagra, Cialis, Levitra, and other

ED drugs in teachers’ healthcare coverage. Interestingly enough, asof August

2010, while many Milwaukee teachers had lost their jobs in an uncertain

American economy hovering around 9.5% unemployment nationally, the

Milwaukee Teachers’Education Association – the local teachers’ union – was

also making the case that the exclusion of Viagra is blatant discrimination

because ED is an ‘‘exclusively gender-related condition.’’ The school board’s

attorneys argued reinstating coverage for ED drugs would be disastrous for

the school district, because this particular drug benefit would cost $786,000

per year, which would be enough to hire a dozen first-year teachers.

This is an interesting twist on the strategy of claiming discrimination,

because in the past otherteachers’ unions have argued thatcoverage of Viagra

discriminates against females because most healthc are insurance programs do

not cover contraceptives or infertility treatment. It also illustrates the growing

tendency in modern society to view the aches and pains of everyday life as

Social Control: Informal, Legal and Medical

Sociology of Crime, Law and Deviance, Volume 15, 1–16

Copyright r2010 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited

All rights of reproduction in any form reserved

ISSN: 1521-6136/doi:10.1108/S1521-6136(2010)0000015003

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amenable to medical understandings and intervention. Indeed, in the past it

was common wisdom that with age men lose their sex drive and also that

sexual novelty is what keeps the flames of sexual passion burning. This means

that it is natural for men to losesexual interest as they age, and natural as well

that men in long-term monogamous relationships lose sexual interest in their

partners. Indeed, it is the charm of sexual novelty that led human beings

slowly to condemn incest and to invent rules of exogamy – the directive to

seek marital partners outside of the immediate kinship group or clan – to

overcome the earlier, primitive rule of endogamy (Ward, 1903, p. 201).

Yet, today, with ongoing medicalization, the aging process itself is now

considered a ‘‘disease,’’ and any diminution of functions – previously always

considered simply a natural aspect of aging, such as the waning of sexual

interest in men – now launches a search to restore proper functioning

and ‘‘health’’ by whatever medical means are available. Medicalization, or

the redefining of social problems as medical problems, is an important

aspect of the broader concept of medical control, which can be defined as the

use of medical understandings, terminology, and interventions to compel

compliance of individuals or groups to some standard of social conduct

(Chriss, 2007). Irving Zola (1972, p. 487) stated this as clearly as anyone

when he noted that medicine is ‘‘becoming a major institution of social

control’’ and that the labels ‘‘healthy’’ and ‘‘ill’’ are being made pertinent to

more areas of our human existence.

The study of social control has a long history within the discipline of

sociology, and in many respects its study could be considered coterminous

with the project of sociology in general. If we take Foucault (1973) seriously

with regard to the importance of naming things, social control was

first ‘‘named’’ by two of the early American sociologists: Lester F. Ward

(1841–1913) and Edward A. Ross (1866–1951). Indeed, Ross’s (1901) book

Social Control was the first book to include the term ‘‘social control’’ in

its title.

Interestingly enough, Ward (1883, Vol. 2, pp. 365–366) was an early

proponent of rehabilitation for those labeled criminal, and he even went so

far as to suggest that crimes are a disease of society and that they are largely

mental, to the extent that crime is due largely to ‘‘ignorance or error.’’ This

is consistent with the ancient Greek notion that crime and vice result from

ignorance and/or a lack of virtue (Chriss, 2007, pp. 64–65). According to

Ward, society advances only to the extent that its people are given access to

education, and as knowledge increases as a resource for the society as a

whole, sympathy or ‘‘fellow-feeling’’ will expand as well, and with it a

decline in crime. With greater knowledge of both the good and the bad, men

JAMES J. CHRISS2