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Regulating Contradictions: The Australian Press Council and the “Dispersal of Social Control”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Pat O'Malley
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Abstract

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The history of the Australian Press Council presents an opportunity to examine the thesis that advanced capitalist states are systematically resorting to dispersed forms of social control. While the council appears to conform to the specifications of a “dispersed agency,” it appears largely to be unintelligible in such terms. While representing some aspects of a social control institution, it is better comprehended in terms of the contradictory characteristics of the social field in which it is located, rather than in terms of a broad strategy of state expansion. The dispersal model should be recast to take account of such variations and to recognize the extent to which social fields may generate their own forms of institutionalized control, which bear a highly problematic relation to state regulation.

Type
Research Article
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 21 , Issue 1 , 1987 , pp. 83 - 108
Copyright
Copyright © 1987 The Law and Society Association.

Footnotes

The research upon which this paper is based was carried out with funds made available by the Research and Travel Grant Committee, School of Social Sciences, La Trobe University, Melbourne. I would like to thank Rick Abel, Zen Bankowski, Kit Carson, Robert Kidder, and Sheldon Messinger for their comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this paper.

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