Social Control Violence and Radicalization

The Kent State Case

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2554063
AutoresRaymond J Adamek (autor de correspondencia), Jerry M Lewis (0000-0001-5858-8634)
Año1973
Volumen51
Número3
Páginas342
Fecha de publicación1973-03-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaSocial Forces (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0037-7732 • E-ISSN: 1534-7605
EditorialOxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/2577139
OpenAlexW2799169372
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas7
Referencias citadas6

This study explores two popular hypotheses as to the effects of the employment of excessive social control force on student demonstrators. One hypothesis suggests that experiencing social control violence will tend to radicalize students, while the other suggests that it will pacify them. A questionnaire survey of the entire student body and interviews with 233 Kent State University undergraduates measuring their attitudes toward violence, and the impact of the May 4, 1970 killings on their political outlooks indicate that radicalization is positively associated with the experience of social control violence. Since the early 1960s, protests and demonstrations have become a and common occurrence in American life. Starting with civil rights demonstrations in the South, these tactics have most recently been employed on college campuses to espouse a variety of causes. Fully one-third of the colleges and universities in the United States were the scene of demonstrations following the Cambodian incursion and the Kent State killings in May of 1970 (Braungart and Braungart, 1971). Moreover, a recent survey by the American Council on Education suggests that the freshmen of the 1971-72 academic year are more prone to dissent than their predecessors (Jacobsen, 1972). Reactions to the escalation of the war in April and May of 1972 indicate that the antiwar movement is not dead, as some have suggested, although it does seem to have diminished in scope. Student activism has become the object of increasing concern and research by various educators and social scientists. To date, most of the research has focused on the differential socioeconomic, academic, psychological and family characteristics of activists and nonactivists (see, for example, the works reviewed in Braungart, 1971; Foster and Long, 1970; Horn and Knott, 1971), or on the differential characteristics of educational institutions which were or were not the locales for student demonstrations (Astin, 1970; Blau and Slaughter, 1971; Kahn and Bowers, 1970; Peterson, 1966, 1968; Sasajima et al. 1968; Scott and El-Assal, 1969). Aron (1971; 1972) has investigated various components of student political ideology, and their relationship to different types of activism. Relatively little research, however, has focused on the effects which the actions of social control agents (police, National Guardsmen, et al.) have on student demonstrators, and others, particularly where such control has involved the use of excessive force.' This research hiatus exists in spite of the fact that various activist groups have advocated confrontation as a political technique to provoke social control agents to violence in order to radicalize both those involved in the confrontation and the general population. There appear to be two hypotheses regarding * This is an expanded and revised version of a paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, New Orleans, August 1972. The authors wish to thank Stuart Taylor et al. for permission to use their data. 1 We are speaking here of relatively rigorous empirical research. Narrative accounts of several disruptions have included evaluations of the impact of social control violence on demonstrators and others. See, for example, Foster and Long (1970:414-415) and Hayden (1967:59). Raine (1970) has investigated the relationship between perception and experience of police brutality on an individual basis (as opposed to mass confrontations) and participation in and attitudes toward the 1965 Watts riots. In general, his findings are similar to those reported below

Criminology · Dissent · Political dissent · Political science · Politics · Radicalization · Social control · Sociology · Spanish Civil War · State (computer science) · Variety (cybernetics) · American Political and Social Dynamics · Law · Psychology · Social Psychology