Understanding Collective Control Processes

Although sociologists often describe people and groups of people as having control over things, resources, or other people, the question of how control processes actually work has rarely been the focus of sociological attention. Theorists of criminology (e.g., Gottfredson and Hirshi 1990) and of organizations (e.g., Perrow 1986) have taken the concept of control as a central concern, but their analyses of the concept have been rudimentary at best. Similarly, social-class theorists in the Marxist tradition have often given the concept of control a prominent place, equating it with domination, without having seen the need for any close analysis of the concept. Wright (1979), for instance, defines social classes in terms of their control of economic surplus, with the “dominant class” (p. 15) exerting “control over money capital, … physical capital” and “supervision and discipline within the labor process” (p. 25). He contends, further, that members of the working class experience a corresponding “loss of control over the labor process” (p. 28). Wright then builds his theoretical exposition on these definitions without ever analyzing in any detail how such control processes work.