Discuss the ways in which science and technology can be used as ...

[anshika]

Discuss the ways in which science and technology can be used as agents of social control for good or ill.
 
  What will be an ideal response?

Question 2

Discuss the Piven and Cloward theory that social welfare can be seen as an agent of direct social control.
 
  What will be an ideal response?

[Gabe]

Answer to Question 1

Feedback: (1) The labeling of mental illness works as a system of social control. For example, homosexuals were once labeled mentally ill and thus unable to challenge social norms. Today, drugs, surgery, and psychotherapy are used to try to change the abnormal to normal. Some sociologists say this application of the medical model to individuals exhibiting certain behaviors personalizes the problem and deflects attention away from the social sources for the behaviors. (2) The potential for eugenics will progress dramatically in the near future through biotechnology. Gene therapy provides breakthroughs in medicine with positive consequences for those suffering from genetic illnesses. But serious questions exists about when and how to interfere with genes. The logic of genetic engineering, while positive in the sense of ridding future generations of hereditary diseases, is frightening in its basic assumption that problems arise, not from the faults of society, but from the genes of individuals in society.

Answer to Question 2

Feedback: Piven and Cloward argue that (1) public assistance programs serve a social control function in times of mass unemployment by defusing social unrest. During the Great Depression, for example, the government remained aloof from the needs of the unemployed until there was a great surge of political disorder. The function of social welfare, then, is to defuse social unrest through direct intervention of the government. Added proof for the Piven and Cloward thesis is the contraction or even abolishment of public assistance programs when political stability is restored. (2) Another function of welfare is more subtle (and fits more logically as an agent of ideological social control). Even in good times some people live on welfare. By having a category of people on welfare who live in poor conditions and are continually degraded, work is legitimized. Thus, the poor on welfare serve as an object lesson, keeping even those who work for low wages relatively satisfied with their position.