Social Control and Human Nature: What Is It We Are Controlling? (Criminal Justice: Recent Scholarship)

"Kuhn focuses on the assumptions that theories of social control make about human nature and examines a number of social and developmental theories that have emerged since Hobbes, whose social contract theory, along with Freud's psychoanalytic theory, so often provide the foundation for theories of social control. Kuhn then incorporates the pragmatic and symbolic interactionist theories she has examined into an alternative theoretical model of Social Identity and Social Control that reorients our view of human nature and outlines a dynamic new approach to understanding criminal behavior."--Jacket The history and development of theories of social control -- Socialization within theories of social control -- A focus on the notion of socialization -- A symbolic interactionist analysis of self-control theory -- Reconstructing a lineage, reconnecting with pragmatism, reforming control theory -- Testing our symbolic interactionist model