Social Regulation in Canada
This course examines how social regulation is produced through state activity and throughout social relations. It explores how social regulation occurs through processes of state formation, socio-legal development, moral regulation, government of the self and others, normalization, and social reform/social movement activism.
Social regulation is organized discursively (in language, dictums, advice, and advertising), and materially (for example, in the organization of space and economic activity, and the physical effect on bodies). It is integral to state practice (through law, social policy, policing, etc.), and it also permeates everyday social life. As a practice, social regulation makes distinctions between right and wrong, the normal and the abnormal, and the permitted and the prohibited. But it also occurs subtly, through nuance, negotiation, and hybridization. Social regulation establishes visible and invisible means of governing our perception of self and others, our conduct, and the conduct of others.
