Social Control in a Group Home for Delinquent Boys

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Abstract
Social control occurs in, as well as by commitment to, total and quasi-total institutions. The powerful and relentless “gaze” of the expert identifies and incarcerates the deviant, but within the walls of the institutional power may become bidirectional, moving between and among staff and inmates. This ethnographic and autoethnographic study of social control illustrates the micro-politics of trouble in a group home for delinquent boys. Although this home, Sweetwater, embodies in its behavior-modification system the “minuteness of the disciplinary gaze,” in day-to-day practice the gaze of staff is often averted. In the interest of maintaining social order, staff members interpret the boys' behavior in the context of their assumed moods and intentions, deescalating as well as escalating trouble in situated interactions.

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