Rethinking social control in a self-service society
This article examines the transformation of social control within a self-service society – a qualitatively new configuration of social order in which the systematic involvement of the individual in the independent provision of services becomes both a structural norm and a normative ideal. The starting point of the study was a dilemma: is the growth of individual autonomy in a self-service society a genuine emancipation from institutional control, or does it merely mask new, more sophisticated forms of its exercise, embedded in the architecture of digital platforms, algorithms and reputation systems? To answer this question, the concept of the locus of social control is proposed as an analytical tool denoting the institutional-spatial configuration of the distribution of control powers amongst the state, corporations, communities and individuals. Based on a theoretical analysis, four mechanisms of control transformation in the service society are identified: delegated control, which systematically shifts functions of verification and accountability from institutions to the individual; algorithmic control, embedded in the architecture of platform services and realised through asymmetry of visibility and the ‘architecture of choice’; mutual control, which reproduces the logic of informal reputational regulation on the scale of digital rating systems; and internalised self-control, which takes the form of productive self-exhaustion in a culture of continuous self-optimisation. It is demonstrated that the combination of these mechanisms creates a structural crisis of control: it is effective in producing behavioural compliance, but ineffective in producing justice, reproducing and deepening social inequality under the guise of universal autonomy. It is concluded that the self-service society does not abolish social control, but rather deinstitutionalises and redistributes it, rendering it more diffuse, invisible and pervasive.
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