Sociology 3260A/B Chapter Notes - Chapter Week 7: Social Control
16 Dec 2018
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Document Summary
Functions of law: recurrent major themes include social control, dispute settlement, and social change. Formal social control is characterized by: explicit rules of conduct, planned use of sanctions to support the rules, designated officials to interpret and enforce the rules, and often to make them. Sociological discussions of law in society often take place in the context of one of 2 ideal conceptions of society: the consensus and conflict perspectives: consensus perspective. Sees society as functionally integrated, relatively stable system held together by a basic consensus of values. Stresses cohesion, solidarity, and integration for the stability of society: an agreement on its fundamental norms and values, conflict perspective. Society consists of groups characterized by conflict and held together by coercion. Law acts as an instrument of repression, perpetuating the interests of the powerful at the cost of alternative interests, norms, and values.
