Urban Reform and Social Control

Informal financial operations exist in the shadow of official regulation and cannot be protected by the formal legal instruments, therefore raising concerns about the enforcement of obligations taken by their participants. This paper analyzes two alternative types of auxiliary institutions, which can coordinate expectations of the members of informal value transfer systems, namely attitudes of trust and norms of social control. It offers some preliminary approaches to creating a game-theoretic model of partner interaction in the informal value transfer system. It also sheds light on the perspectives of further studies in this area of institutional economics.

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The Township, the Pregnant Girl and the Church: Community Dynamics, Gender and Social Control in Early Nineteenth-century Scotland

Northern Scotland ◽

10.3366/nor.2019.0168 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 10 (1) ◽

pp. 41-67

Author(s):

Elizabeth Ritchie

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Rural Communities ◽

Social Control ◽

Community Dynamics ◽

Church Discipline ◽

Sexual Offences ◽

Early Nineteenth Century ◽

Female Community ◽

The Church ◽

Unmarried Girl

In 1814 in a small Highland township an unmarried girl, ostracised by her neighbours, gave birth. The baby died. The legal precognition permits a forensic, gendered examination of the internal dynamics of rural communities and how they responded to threats to social cohesion. In the Scottish ‘parish state’ disciplining sexual offences was a matter for church discipline. This case is situated in the early nineteenth-century Gàidhealtachd where and when church institutions were less powerful than in the post-Reformation Lowlands, the focus of most previous research. The article shows that the formal social control of kirk discipline was only part of a complex of behavioural controls, most of which were deployed within and by communities. Indeed, Scottish communities and churches were deeply entwined in terms of personnel; shared sexual prohibitions; and in the use of shaming as a primary method of social control. While there was something of a ‘female community’, this was not unconditionally supportive of all women nor was it ranged against men or patriarchal structures.

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LEAH LENEMAN and ROSALIND MLTCHISON,Girls in Trouble. Sexuality and Social Control in Rural Scotland 1660-1780Edinburgh, Scottish Cultural Press, 1998, pp.viii + 133, Pbk. £10.95

Scottish Economic & Social History ◽

10.3366/sesh.1999.19.part_1.82 ◽

1999 ◽

Vol 19 (PART_1) ◽

pp. 82-85

Author(s):

Lynn Abrams

Keyword(s):

Social Control

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