Social Control as Simulative Practice of Management of Social Tension in the Concept of Jan Bodryjar’s «Consumption Society»

Abstract

The article presents the development of a theoretical analysis of the essence and mechanisms of social control as a specific conflict factor of social tension in the «consumer society» within the framework of Jean Baudrillard's postmodern paradigm. In the course of writing a scientific article, the author posed the task of revealing the theoretical significance of the notion of «social control» as a necessary condition for the organization of social order and an effective mechanism for managing social tension within the framework of the organized interaction of individual and collective actors in public life. Reconstructing the research ideas of Baudrillard, it was discovered that the central methodological idea is constructive attempts to overcome the conceptual differences between subjectivism and objectivism, which consist in actualizing the theoretical idea of «symbolic exchange». It is argued that in the conceptual framework of this direction the concept of «social control» reflects the functional specificity of the instruments of exploitation of man by the capitalist system – the media, the cinema, art, information technologies as such, which are aimed at attracting people to consumption processes, through the formation of thinking, manipulating the symbolic «simulated» models of the consumption system in the mass consciousness. It is substantiated that modern mechanisms of social control are oriented to the formation of «hyper reality» as a specific «virtualized» information space for the dissemination of symbolic codes, signs, simulative practices that reflect power relations, as well as the maintenance of social tension and growing distrust of social institutions-status relations. At the same time, the author states that the development of information and virtual technologies forms a space for discussions about the constructive importance of social control in managing social tension.