Control Signals
Martin Innes · Oxford University Press eBooks · 2014
A control signal is an act of social control conveying a message to a wider social audience. Starting with a story about the execution of a group of smugglers in the eighteenth century, that fades into an extensive discussion of the performative acts of policing, a number of types of control signal are mapped out. It is shown that control signals can be deliberately manufactured or emerge more organically out of social control acts and interventions. Furthermore a differentiation can be made between positive and negative signal effects. In the second half of the chapter the focus is upon how accenting the communicative properties and qualities of control acts has repercussions for our understandings of social control processes more broadly. A distinction between ‘signals of control’ and ‘signals to control’ is identified.