R obert M. Emerson is P r o f e s s o r o f S o c i o l o g y a t t h e U n i v e r s i t y o f C a l i f o r n i a , Los A n g e l e s . H e h a s w r i t t e n e x t e n s i v e l y o n e t h n o g r a p h i c a n d field r e s e a r c h m e t h o d s . His s u b s t a n t i v e r e s e a r c h e x a m i n e s b o th th e official a n d i n d i g e n o u s i d e n t i f i c a t i o n a n d p r o c e s s i n g o f " t r o u b l e " in a v a r i e t y o f s e t t i n g s . H i s s t u d i e s o f t h e e v e r y d a y w o r k c i r c u m s t a n c e s a n d d e c i s i o n - m a k i n g p r a c t i c e s of o f f icial s o c i a l c o n t r o l a g e n t s a n d a g e n c i e s h a v e f o c u s e d o n ju v e n i l e c o u r t j u d g e s , p s y c h i a t r i c e m e r g e n c y t e a m s , j u n i o r h i g h s c h o o l d e a n s , p r o s e c u t o r i a l i n t a k e s c r e e n i n g , r e s i d e n t i a l f ac i li ti es for e x - m e n t a l p a t i e n t s , a n d l e g a l a i d p r o g r a m s f o r a p p l i c a n t s f o r d o m e s t i c v i o l e n c e r e s t r a i n i n g o r d e r s . H i s r e s e a r c h o n i n t e r p e r s o n a l t r o u b l e s a n d i n f o r m a l c o n t r o l h a s e x a m i n e d s t a l k i n g a n d h o m e c a r e g i v i n g fo r f a m i l y m e m b e r s w i t h A l z h e i m e r i s d i s e a s e , a s w e l l a s r o o m m a t e , n e i g h b o r a n d a d o l e s c e n t t r o u b l e s .
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Reflections on the
Study of Informal
Social Control
Robert M . EmersonI
N 19 4 1, in an early attem pt to free the concept o f social control from the restrictions imposed by the model o f formal legal codes and state-authorized legal institutions, Llewellyn and H oebel analyzed the "law-ways” o f the Cheyenne Indians as mechanisms for "cleaning up social messes” (20). Understanding how law-like processes arise and play out in both traditional and contem porary societies, Llewellyn and H oebel argued, is best pursued by close analysis o f "cases o f trouble, dispute, breach, disturbance” (27).Despite strong interest in social control generally, contem po rary sociological and sociolegal scholarship devote little attention to the processes o f informal, non-state control highlighted by Llwellyn and Hoebel. Nonetheless informal social control — the ways in which people deal with problems and disagreements with others, prior to and independently o f the involvement o f authori tative third parties — deserves close attention on a num ber of grounds. First, even societies w ith pervasive, state-powered legal institutions continue to generate local, b ottom -up processes o f control which do not, at least initially, directly involve centralized political authority or the actions o f the state. Inform al social
control is a central process in public place order, families and intimate relations, relations among neighbors, in informal social settings, and in the unofficial workings o f a variety o f institutions and organizations.
Second, in many instances it is the failure o f informal social control th at leads to the invo cation o f formal control measures. M any cases are taken to criminal and civil courts, for example, w hen one party comes to view as inadequate prior indigenous, informal efforts to deal w ith a problem (e.g., M erry 1979,1990). A nd finally, beyond the analysis o f social control per se, occa sions o f “trouble, dispute, breach, disturbance” are often deeply revealing o f fundamental social concerns and processes th at are indistinct or obscured under routine circumstances.
In recent years I have begun to examine pro cesses o f informal social control using concepts derived from the “m icro-politics o f trouble” fram ework originally developed w ith Sheldon L. M essinger (Em erson and M essinger 1977). In this w ork we proposed analyzing informal social control (we spoke o f “informal reactions” to actions and actors who m ight eventually come to be identified as “deviant”) by examining the natural history o f lay-defined “troubles.” As we outlined this approach (1977:121):
(A)ny social setting generates a number of evanescent, ambiguous difficulties that may ultimately be — but are not immediately — identified as “deviant.”In many instances what is first recognized is a vague sense of “something wrong” — some “problem” or “trouble.” Consideration of the natural his tory of such problems can provide a fruitful approach to processes of informal reaction
and to their relation to the reactions of official agencies of social control.
I am currently pursuing the study o f informal reactions to “social messes” by collecting em piri cal materials on a variety o f unofficial troubles — those involving strangers in public place encounters, college roommates, residents o f a college co-operative, neighbors in apartm ent houses and residential neighborhoods, peers in workplace settings, and in families caring for a member w ith A lzheim ers disease. In the comments which follow I w ant to offer some reflections on the distinctive qualities or features o f informal control and to point toward some general principles for developing a sociology o f trouble to analyze such control processes in these and similar informal settings.
L et me start w ith this general claim: W e have not paid close attention to the distinc tive features and processes o f informal control because o f a persistent tendency to conceive o f such control in law-like terms. For even while emphasizing that no legal agents are involved, many approaches conceptualize informal con trol as fundamentally matters o f rule violation and punishment. C onsider Ellicksons (1991) well-received study o f how ranchers in Shasta County, California, settle problems involving cattle w ithout invoking the law.
Ellickson conceives o f a “system o f social control” based on “rules o f normatively appro priate hum an behavior. These rules are enforced through sanctions, the adm inistration o f which itself governed by rules” (1991:124). Sanctions include both rewards to encourage “prosocial
behavior” and punishm ents to discourage “an tisocial behavior” (124-125). Inform al control involves the enforcement not o f formal rules but o f “norms,”such as the Shasta County norm that “an owner of livestock is responsible for the conduct o f his animals.” (130).
H e notes that in contrast to laws, “norms are harder to verify because their enforcement is highly decentralized and no particular indi viduals have special authority to proclaim norms” (130). Such norms are enforced by local “social forces,” particularly by sanctions administered against another by one s “friends, relatives, gossips, vigilantes, and other nonhierarchical third-party
enforcers” (131, fn. 21).
This and sim ilar conceptions o f inform al control are perm eated by legal categories and assumptions.The basic framework — rules and sanctions — parallels and derives from govern m ental rules (laws) and punishm ents (“state enforcement”).The rules that are violated are not laws but informal “norm s”, and enforcement is achieved not through state-imposed but unofficial punishments or “sanctions”.Thus informal control is characterized by many o f the basic processes o f legal control — identifying violations, judg ing and sanctioning those held responsible for such violations, etc. — although by means o f unofficial mechanisms in the former case and state-authorized penal ones in the latter.
This norm-violation and enforcement/sanc- tioning imagery makes two key assumptions that neglect or obscure im portant features o f ordinary processes o f informal control, namely, (1) th at informal control involves responses to norm -violating behavior, where the m eaning o f
behavior as norm-violating is pre-given and fixed; and (2) that informal control is primarily a m at ter o f imposing sanctions, typically punishments, on norm-violators or offenders. I will consider each o f these assumptions in turn.
(1) By conceptualizing informal control as lay responses to normative offenses or violations, theories neglect entirely how matters come to be identified as violations or offenses in the first place. Goffman (1961:133), for example, argues that involuntary m ental hospitalization occurs w ith com plaints involving “offenses against some arrangem ent for face-to-face living,” but does not address how such problems come to be recognized or how they develop over time; e.g., how complaining parties come to identify another’s actions as problematic and eventually as distinctive “offenses.”
Similarly, Black (1984:1) defines informal control as “any process by which people define or respond to deviant behavior” without invoking governmental authority, but does not examine the processes by which people actually identify behavior as “normatively undesirable” in one fashion or another. A nd Ellickson (1991:124) identifies social control as the enforcem ent through sanctions o f “rules o f normatively appro priate hum an behavior,”but assumes consensus concerning just w hat such rules or norms are and w hen they have been violated, thus ignor ing how these judgm ents are actually made in specific instances.
These and other approaches,1 then, assume that matters have already been more or less firmly shaped up as offenses or violations, ignoring the critical interpretive work through which people
invoke particular norms and frame particular events as certain kinds o f “violations” — for example, as deliberately, intentionally motivated acts o f wrongdoing rather than as acts produced by ignorance or accident.
It is im portant for analyses o f informal con trol to examine how people over time come to experience and identify various sorts o f everyday problems, discontents, and troubles, w ithout assuming that these matters are inevitably under stood as normative offenses right from the start. O ne would w ant to analyze the initial interpre tations or understandings o f problems that are made subject to efforts at informal control, and to trace out the kinds o f changes and redefini tions that constitute the natural history o f such control efforts. Such an approach recognizes that informal control need not necessarily arise in response to clear-cut, specific “norm viola tions”; as illustrated in “Conflict and Deviance in Roommate Relations,” there is often a pre
history to attributions o f normative violation or offense that analyses o f informal control need to
recognize and examine. The key issues become how some behavior becomes identified as prob lematic, in w hat particular ways, and w hen and how particular norms are invoked to understand and define such behavior.
(2) The emphasis on negative sanctions or punishment in informal control is overstated, for many instances o f such control do not involve efforts to punish, harm or deprive the other. Particularly in enduring relationships, such con trol is often directed at correcting or remedying situations or behavior which irritate or upset, at creating or restoring some kind o f order. The
concept o f remedies reframes the character o f informal control as a practical m atter of “dealing with” or “doing something about” discontents or troubles, not simply or primarily a moralistically- driven process o f dispensing “sanctions.”
The goal is not to penalize the other, but to get that person to change his or her ways in desired directions; and while authority and coercion can be turned to in the attem pt to get another per son to change their behavior, these mechanisms often have limited effectiveness in most informal relationships (Goffman 1971b). For, given any limits in authority or coercive power, change in informal relationships and settings requires some degree o f cooperation or participation from the other, as “control that is initiated outside the offender will not be very effective unless it can in some degree awaken corrective action from within” (Goffman 1971^:347). Punishments, then,
are not usually effective devices for encourag ing cooperation, and troubled parties generally rely upon negotiations, exchanges, inducements, rational appeals, and pleas for loyalty or solidar ity to try to obtain cooperation in stopping or changing another’s problematic behavior.
In sum, the assumptions o f initial norm viola tion and sanctioning derive from a legal model of informal control, and distort and misrepresent the beginnings and subsequent development o f many instances o f informal control. In particu lar, these assumptions cast informal control as a distinctly moralistic enterprise, rendering it fundamentally a process o f identifying and pun ishing norm violators or wrongdoers. Recognition that much informal control involves efforts at correcting or rem edying troubled situations
suggests th at deeply moral concerns are not identical w ith informal control, but arise only in some situations under some circumstances. O th er qualities characterize informal control on other occasions.
H ere we may suggest, first, th at remedies are more commonly pragmatic rather than moralistic acts. The dom inant concern is not to condemn or punish the other as a wrongdoer, but to elimi nate or stop the problem or situation that gives rise to the discontent. In this sense remedies are practical actions intended to stop or change some immediate local problem, to help work out or settle some trouble in one fashion or another. Second, remedies are distinctively prospective rather than retrospective in character, oriented more toward w hat is anticipated may happen in the future than toward w hat has happened in the past. The issue is to prevent reoccurrences o f problems. The goal is to alert the other to one’s discontent w ith the expectation that hav ing done so the other will not behave in th at way in the future.
A nd finally, remedies often involve highly idiosyncratic, situationally-specific “solutions” to some concrete problem. Such solutions may disattend possible judgm ents o f wrongdoing, fault or blame, simply im plem enting actions to avoid, work around, work out or settle the trouble in one way or another. Thus there is little or no concern w ith the precedent-setting
implications o f any particular remedy or w ith “treating like cases alike.” As a result remedial actions frequently reveal the “rough, ready, and changing form” th at Goffman (1971a: 95-96) cites as characteristic o f informal, face-to-face interactional processes o f control.
Finally, it is im portant to note that a focus on everyday troubles and practical efforts to remedy them re-centers the analysis o f informal control toward routine, mundane interactions and rela tional exchanges. I see such a focus on “little problems” as a useful corrective to the attrac tions provided by looking primarily at extreme, dram atic a n d /o r striking actions involving processes o f informal control, notably feud and vengeance, violence generally, and other sorts o f major offenses (see Black 1984).
M ajor offenses, particularly those involving violence, are obviously a critical area o f research w ith great im port for the study o f informal con trol. But many of these “serious” infractions start out as m inor relational or interactional troubles; while some may quickly and dramatically escalate to produce serious, long-lasting consequences, others move in this direction only gradually and uncertainly, as initial remedial efforts fail, troubles persist, and ill-will slowly builds.
A nd more significantly, most m inor troubles are ultimately either resolved or accommodated to, never reaching the level o f “serious m atters” in the first place.
★ Endnote
1 Simi lar t e n d e n c i e s m a r k th e s o c i o l e g a l d i s p u t e tr a n s f o r m a ti o n m o d e l , w h i c h di re ctl y a d d r e s s e s p r o c e s s e s of inform al co nt rol b y f o c u s in g o n h o w i n t e r p e r s o n a l d i s p u t e s a r i s e a n d e v o l v e . This m o d e l a s s u m e s th a t th e initial o c c u r r e n c e of a n "injurious e x p e r i e n c e " (Felstiner et a l ., 1 9 8 0 - 1 9 8 1 ) , then e x a m i n e s w h e t h e r or not its r e c i p i e n t c o m e s to p e r c e i v e it a s su ch , at tri bu te b l a m e , a n d a d v a n c e a c l a im b a s e d o n it (Em ers on 1 9 9 2 ) .★ References
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