Strength and weakness of social control in crisis and military confl icts conditions: Ukrainian context

Abstract

The author’s ideas concerning the role of social control in modern society, in particular, the manifestation of its strength and weakness in periods of crises and military conflicts represented in the article. The imbalance of its institutional mechanism in modern society is connected with neglecting democratic principles of social processes development by political actors. Using the scientific ideas of J. Lacan, R. Bart and the Ukrainian researcher O. Zubareva, the author considers that in a postmodern society social control changes its boundaries and the area of its existence, becoming identical to discourse because language as “an essential form of compulsion” becomes the core (R. Bart). It is argued that in the conditions of crises and military conflicts the mechanism of social control loses its power of regulation since in some territorial or social locations new markers of its discourse become important, namely pseudo-values, quasinorms, social pseudo-game, images, ideals and reforms mythologisation, the power of pseudo-authorities, pseudo-symbols, simulacra etc. which are the components of social mimicry. As a result, a pseudo-institutional mechanism of social control is created. Its cultural rules, values and social norms have nothing in common with human values, but only imitate them, masking them behind “irrelevant memeplexes” (Yu. Poluliakh).