Donald Ross's Theory Of Society In Stateless Society
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In contrasting to the problem with this definition, of course, is that it represents society as an actor. Who actually does the responding? Aren’t the deviants and undesirables part of the very society that supposedly deals with them? Don’t they interact with others? Or are we to assume that “society” in reality means the state and its agents and institutions? Then, what about Social Control in stateless societies? Ross’s legacy is totally confusing and worthless?
Ross himself clearly meant it to cover both the formal institutions of the state and all kinds of nongovernmental arenas, some of them at the “bottom” of society. Thus, Ross allowed for top-down as well as bottom-up perspectives on Social Control. We cannot simply adopt all of Ross’s premises a hundred years later. Ross’s notion that Social Control is often based on a degree of consensus and ideals of harmony can be adopted and used to analyze communities and voluntary associations in the past.
Donald Black (1984) and Alan Horwitz (1990) argued that, moreover, that Social Control involves both formal control semanating from the state and a host of informal reactions and interventions at nongovernmental levels of society, including, for example, the power of gossip.Notably, Horwitz emphasizes that Social Control does not require the existence of consensus regarding the definitions of appropriate behavior. Cooney, too, acknowledges that the state, where it exists, forms merely a part of society and that top-down