The concept of "social control' emerged from the developing field of sociology as a discipline in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As sociologist Morris Janowitz wrote in the American Journal of Sociology, "in the emergence of sociology as an intellectual discipline, the idea of social control was a central concept for analyzing social organization and the development of industrial society."[28] Social control is largely viewed as forms of control which reduce coercion, and thus, enhance consent to the system or organizations in question. Even a society with an effective system of social control would require a structure of coercion, but depending on how advanced the social control system is, the less need there would be for coercion. Hence, the societies which are the most advanced in social control would also be less dependent upon internal methods of coercion. Thus, it was within liberal democratic states that both the study and implementation of social control became most effective. In this sense, the question was "whether the processes of social control are able to maintain the social order [hierarchy] while transformation and social change take place."[29]
Sociology largely emerged from the University of Chicago (founded by John D. Rockefeller), with the world's first department of sociology founded in 1892. The sociologists who rose within and out of the University of Chicago made up what was known as the "Chicago School of Sociology.' The school developed the most influential sociologists in the nation, including George Herbert Mead and W.I. Thomas, two scholars who had profound influence on the development of the concept of "social control,' and sociologists became "reform-oriented liberals, not radical revolutionaries or conservative cynics."[30]
The new industrial elite accumulated millions and even hundreds of millions by the end of the 19th century: Andrew Carnegie was worth roughly $300 million after he sold Carnegie Steel to J.P. Morgan in 1901, and by 1913, John D. Rockefeller was estimated to have a personal worth of $900 million. It was with Rockefeller that we see the development of the scientific notion of philanthropy.[31] Rockefeller had founded the Institute for Medical Research in 1901, the General Education Board (GEB) in 1903, and the Sanitary Commission for the Eradication of Hookworm in 1909. Rockefeller, however, wanted to consolidate his philanthropic enterprise as he had his industrial oil enterprise, and so in 1909 he decided he wanted to establish one great foundation, which "would be a single central holding company which would finance any and all of the other benevolent organizations, and thus necessarily subject them to its general supervision."[32] In 1913, the Rockefeller Foundation received a charter of incorporation from the State of New York.
Between 1881 and 1907, Andrew Carnegie had contributed over $40 million to establishing more than 1,600 libraries in the United States alone, but it was after selling Carnegie Steel to J.P. Morgan in 1901 for $300 million that Carnegie began to look at philanthropy on a much larger scale. In 1902, he founded the Carnegie Institution of Washington, and in 1904, founded the Carnegie Corporation of Washington, of which the mission was, "to encourage in the broadest and most liberal manner, investigation, research and discovery, and the application of knowledge to the improvement of mankind," much like the original mission statement of the Rockefeller Foundation created some years later, "to promote the well-being of mankind."[33] Carnegie founded, in 1911, the Carnegie Corporation, chartered by the New York State legislature.[34]
These philanthropic foundations, and the many others that appeared in and around the same time, and thereafter, were largely imbued with the idea of "science in the service of society" as a goal for the foundation, basing its actions upon a new rationality brought on by the scientific revolution, and by the notions of reform pushed forward in the Progressive Era, based largely upon the concept of scientific social planning "to problems that educators, the new sociologists, social workers, and political scientists found important." However, as the wealth of the foundations and the positions of their patrons attracted criticisms, a Congressional commission was on industrial relations (founded to settle a matter related to a brutal repression of a mining strike by a Rockefeller-owned mining company) expanded its scope to deal with the general issue of the foundations. The Walsh Commission, as it was known (after its founder, Frank P. Walsh), was formed in 1914, and Walsh explained the inclusion of the foundations in the commission by postulating that:
the creation of the Rockefeller and other foundations was the beginning of an effort to perpetuate the present position of predatory wealth through the corruption of sources of public information" [and] that if not checked by legislation, these foundations will be used as instruments to change to form of government of the U.S. at a future date, and there is even a hint that there is a fear of a monarchy.[35]
In 1916, the Walsh Commission produced its final report, the Manly Report (after the research director, Basil M. Manly), which concluded that the foundations were so "grave a menace" to society, that "it would be desirable to recommend their abolition." No such actions were taken.[36]
David Nugent, an anthropologist at Emory University, wrote a rather lengthy article for the academic journal, Identities, on the role of foundations in shaping the social sciences. Nugent takes a look at the development of the social sciences in relation to the construction of an American Empire. As such, the shaping of the social sciences was designed, at least in part, with an aim to facilitate the emergence and maintenance of a large, globally expanding empire, but an empire unlike previous ones, with no official overseas colonies; rather, it was to be an informal global empire. Globally expansive and locally administered colonies were to replaced with globally expansive and locally applicable social sciences. In order for the empire to spread its military and commercial might across the world, first, the ideas at the heart of the empire must proliferate globally. Imperialism is not merely a political or economic endeavour; it is, and arguably more importantly, a socio-cultural process.
The colonization of the Americas and Africa by the European powers -- with their political apparatus and for the benefit of their commercial and financial appendages -- would not have been possible without the powerful social and cultural imperialism of the missionaries, whose "gospel' debased traditional local cultural, spiritual, and religious practices and introduced new conceptions of morality, values, truth, justice, and knowledge. The social sciences then, presented the world with a form of imperialism focused on the construction of a new form of knowledge by which to understand, define, categorize, and change our world. The new missionaries spreading this new gospel were the dominant American foundations, most notably, the Rockefeller and Carnegie Foundations, later to be joined by a plethora of others, including the Ford Foundation.
Nugent divides the construction of the social sciences in America, and indeed around the world, into three specific time periods; periods which are defined by economic crises and major geopolitical shifts taking place within those parts of the world which the United States seeks to dominate and control. The first period Nugent identified is what he referred to as the "Formation of Overseas Empire," from 1900-1940. This period was preceded with an economic depression in 1893 and ended with World War II, though the most rapid changes in the social sciences occurred between World War I and World War II. The second period Nugent identified, the "Consolidation of Overseas Empire," covered the period of 1943 to 1972, responding to the Depression in the 1930s, the ending of World War II and the subsequent decolonization of the so-called "Third World,' and came to an end with the end of the Bretton Woods agreement in 1972, signaling a new phase of rapid economic changes. The third major period then, the "Reconstruction of Overseas Empire," took place roughly between 1972 and 2001, which began with the recession of the early 70s, marking profound changes across the Third World, the emergence of neoliberalism, and advanced into the 21st century.[37]
Nugent rightly points out that, while the sponsors of the social sciences, namely, the major foundations, produced such knowledge with specific purpose and intent in establishing and re-enforcing hegemony, empire, domination, social engineering, and social control, it would be a mistake to brand all social science knowledge as being in the service to such interests. Indeed, Nugent wrote, "each of the three period generated a small body of progressive scholarship alongside a much larger corpus of conventional knowledge."[38]
In the period between World War I and World War II, just as the foundations were themselves emerging, their initial focus in education was in financing the reorganization of major universities in the United States, and almost simultaneously, "they also oversaw sweeping changes in the organization of the social sciences -- in the aims, methods, and means of evaluating research, in the background, training, and professional activities of the practitioners, and in the institutional processes that underwrote the production of knowledge."[39] In this period, both Western scholars in North America and Europe, as well as non-Western scholars in Africa, the Americas, and even in China, were concerned with studying the ways in which North Atlantic industrial capitalism and European imperialism had been "shaping regional and local arenas around the globe, in undermining indigenous economic and socio-political forms, in precipitating enormous population movements, and in stimulating novel cultural configurations and new forms of political affiliation."[40]
While the Rockefeller philanthropies (including the General Education Board, the Laura-Spellman Rockefeller Memorial, and the Rockefeller Foundation) as well as the Carnegie Corporation were the most influential in this process, they were joined by the Russell Sage Foundation, the Julius Rosenwald Fund, the Phelps-Stokes Fund, and eventually several prominent think tanks (which they also created), such as the Brookings Institution and the Council on Foreign Relations. It was not merely within the United States that these foundations organized and funded the social sciences, but in fact across much of the English-speaking world as a whole, and indeed, well beyond it. Much of their finances went to helping various organizations reform and accommodate these new forms of knowledge; however, the foundations also created several new institutions to achieve their goals in the social sciences or to focus on the specific goal of altering particular institutions. As Nugent noted:
during a period when nation-states were the main arbiters of cultural messages and capital flows, the social science infrastructure that Rockefeller, Carnegie and the other foundations helped to construct was largely independent of (though in no way in conflict with) national controls. In the long run, this infrastructure promoted a "flexible accumulation of knowledge" on a global scale, and in the process helped bring into being an international public sphere of social science knowledge.[41]
This task of "social control" was envisioned by the foundations as consisting in "helping the masses "adjust' to the rigors of industrial life and representative democracy." The problems with social control that erupted in this era were identified by the foundations as being caused by a number of factors, including the deteriorating condition of the cities, a lack of understanding of the immigrant populations and democratic institutions, resulting in the breakdown of social order. Thus, as Nugent wrote, "the result was a sweeping program of social change and control."[42]
A Rockefeller Foundation report acknowledged that many people in the world had already been subjected to the "enormously damaging effects" of industrial activity," and saw it as necessary to alter the "radically false views of life and radically false views of nature" by many of these people. To bring these people into the modern age, foundations agreed, they needed to effect "almost a social revolution," and to offer these people "training in new forms of political and social organization." John D. Rockefeller, Jr., articulating the purpose of the Rockefeller Foundation, explained that it would offer "the best of Western civilization, not only in" science but in mental development and spiritual culture." Science, of course, was the basis upon which the foundations were created: to not only advance the sciences within their own fields, but to advance the principle of the "scientific management" of society. Wicliffe Rose, a professor who was involved in managing several different Rockefeller philanthropies, wrote in a memorandum for Rockefeller officials in 1923:
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