Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/531

Rh desires of the individual in the course of community life as due partly to Social Influence and partly to Social Control. These two making up the grand division of social phenomena I shall venture to call Social Ascendency. Social Influence means the ascendency exercised over the individual by the throng of men in which he is embedded. The stimulus given to the lust for wealth by life in money-worshiping communities, the whetting the appetites received in profligate circles, the color the immigrant takes from the vices or aspirations of his adopted people—these exemplify social influence. It is the contagion of emotions, ambitions, desires. Though it may describe a stream of tendency one cannot stem, it results from the contact and intercourse of men as individuals.

By Social Control, on the other hand, I mean that asceadency over the aims and acts of the individual which is exercised on behalf of the group. It is a sway that is not casual or incidental, but is purposive and at its inception conscious. It is kept up partly by definite organs, formally constituted and supported by the will of society, and partly by informal spontaneous agencies that, consciously or unconsciously, serve the social interest and function under constant supervision from above. Though the two forms of ascendency—social control and social influence—shade off into each other, and appear much the same to the man who experiences them, they are profoundly different in that the former is a necessary social function, while the latter is a mere incident of association. The one is a collective term for certain phenomena of social life; the other is a developed system that challenges analysis and explanation.

Social Control must not be confounded with Social Coördination, on the ground that the latter like the former seeks to make certain rules or standards prevail. An ordinance requiring street cars to stop at the further crossing or directing passing teamsters to turn to the right, coördinates rather than controls. Control harmonizes clashing activities by checking some and stimulating others. Coördination combines activities already harmonious in respect to their ends. The rule that social calls should be made