How is Social Order Possible?

Abstract

The escalating crime rates of the 1960s and 1970s have led despairing neoclassical philosophers to argue that sociological theories of crime are irrelevant for the conduct of social policy. A review of those theories lends some support to that argument. Failing to develop an adequately complex dialectical conception either of human nature or of social order, sociologists have come perilously close to arguing that young street criminals are oversocialized individuals who would not commit crimes were it not for blocked opportunities and oppressive rules. Research evidence, by contrast, not only questions this point of view but argues strongly for a reconsideration of the two basic questions first raised by Hobbes: “What is it that makes people tractable to social discipline?” and “How is social order possible?” Efforts to answer these questions are complicated not merely by age-old forms of discrimination but by social movements designed to further extend the individual freedoms encouraged by Enlightenment Philosophy.