August 29, 2015 - admin
Volume 41, Issue 4/5: Descent into the Maelstrom
In his examination of governing under capitalism, Goran Therborn (2008) remarks that evidence of a society, in which the forces of social control manage through the general population’s acceptance of the legitimacy of that rule, is the absence of a police presence to enforce ideological domination. The less often one experiences the police on a daily basis, the more we can argue that people have – consciously or unconsciously – accommodated to the social, political and economic structure of society. It stands to reason, then, that the opposite is true, that a major presence of institutions of control in their many forms (whether local constabulary, regional authorities, national police, and – in the most extreme case – military units) will reflect a society in stress, a society which increasingly shows signs of a loss of legitimacy or support for ruling elites and structures.
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