This podcast offers a contemporary application of the concept of social control based around Shearing and Stenning’s (1984) article “From the Panopticon to Disney World: the Development of Discipline”.

The general argument developed here is that contemporary societies increasingly feature a form of “consensual social control” that combines a centralised control agencies (such as private corporations) with personal forms of conformity based around perceptions of safety, risk and so forth.

Key concepts covered in this podcast:

• Social control

• Force and socialisation

• Consensual control

• Embedding

• Power

• Surveillance