Societal control culture

As the societal control culture moved towards diffusion, esca lation and innovation, so did the warning system become more formalized and bureaucratized. Shortly before August Bank Holiday, 1964, the Home Office Airborne Police Scheme to fly reinforcements in RAF Transport Command, was publicized. A local paper, in a report headed Town Is Ready For All Comers announced that besides elaborate pohce preparations, special arrangements had been made to open the Town Hall courtroom over the weekend. (Hostings and St Leonards Observer, 1 April 1965). These were not only warnings but stage setting ceremonies there was no doubt that the show would take place, one just had to make sure that the folk devils and their denouncers would have the appropriate arenas for their performance. 

Like other aspects of the societal reaction, the exploitative culture both reflects and - as the next chapter considers - creates the amplification of deviance. What I have suggested in this chapter is that, in addition to the ordinary deviation amplification sequence (initial deviance, societal reaction, increase in deviance, increase in reaction, etc.), a similar process is at work within the reaction itself This is indicated, during the moral panic, by the presence within the control culture of such features as sensitization, diffusion, escalation, dramatization and exploitation. These were parasitic on each other, as were the different groups of reactors for example, the media reacting not so much to the deviance, but to what the magistrates said the deviance was. Thus, almost independent of the deviance, the reactors amplified the situation. One of the flows that can be visualized runs something like this ... 

As society advances, its values depend on what is produced and those sources of production. However, as the means to acquire products becomes easier, values turn inward to the general societal welfare and our environment. Uncontrolled fire can devastate our assets and production sources, and this relates to the societal costs of fire prevention and loss restoration. The effects of fire on people and the environment become social issues that depend on the political ideology and economics that prevail in the state. Thus, attention to fire prevention and control depend on its perceived damage potential and our social values in the state. While these issues have faced all cultures, perhaps the twentieth century ultimately provided the basis for addressing fire with proper science in the midst of significant social and technological advances, especially among the developed countries. 

Local medical and societal cultural factors impact on the ethics committee approvals, so that a study that is considered to be ethical in one country may be regarded as unethical in another. Examples of this may be the unacceptability of the use of placebo control in depression studies in Germany, whereas similar studies would be permitted elsewhere. Similarly, the common practice of extensive blood sampling in Belgium, especially in pediatric studies, would be regarded as excessive and hence unethical in other countries. 

Cultural and societal stress will act as a birth control method. Males subordinate to the dominant or alpha male will not be as virile as the dominant male. 

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