4 page essay

Tyler Stewart /

AP GEOG 2060 3.0

June 15, 2014.

Assignment #4 – Space and Moral Regulation

(1) Space and Moral Regulation: Discuss what historical geographers mean by the term "moral regulation" and discuss the usefulness of connecting it to space.

The beginning… Moral regulation is a somewhat advanced concept, which I attempted to explain with various Toronto examples. Essentially moral regulation is the culture, which a powerful social group brings to a place to shape that space to suit its own interests.

Moral regulation.... attempts to impose order, and provoke disorder.

Every day we as humans are forced to confine to the rules given to us and set by society. We knowingly must act and behave “properly” according to the State. Whether it is regulation by natural or by government, we are forced to make best of what we are given and to confine to the expected “order” of society and what it deems right or wrong. Moral regulation is complex and advanced concept, and doesn’t solely have one entire meaning. It connects aspects of culture, landscape, region, and space, being shaped by powerful social, political, and/or economical interests. Some moral regulations do change and none are in no way permanent, but moral regulation’s aim is to promote and preserve certain behaviors, so that they remain apparent in that specific place, while trying to eliminate the “unwanted” behaviors. This helps the shaping of space, as certain characteristics and behaviors are associated with a community, and its residents.

Moral regulation is not to be confused with social control, but instead is a type of social control, moreover, moral regulation is essentially the culture that a powerful social group brings to a place to shape that space to suit their own specific interests. There are many miscon

NOT PART OF MY ESSAY

Against Valverde, Hunt insists that moral regulation should not be thought through the lens of class, but in terms of moralisation rather than morality, targeting conduct and subjec- tivity rather than thought and principles alone. 137 brown legg

For the HCW, however, differences in behaviour were no more than coincidentally connected to differences in wealth. The real determinant of behaviour, the group argued, was not household wealth but the unrelated matter of ‘environment.’….. As one member put it:

Children are not born equal. One is born with a silver spoon in its mouth and another is note, but that is but an item, for silver spoons amount to but very little in the race of life.What does count - overwhelmingly - is ENVIRONMENT.

This definition implies that moral regulation is a legitimating activity; its function is to make certain social arrangements seem justified and natural (see also Osborne 1994:289). This is what ideologies are usually supposed to do (see, e.g., Ruonavaara 1996b); indeed, Corrigan locates moral regulation in the “terrain of cultural production and ideological relations” (1990:132). Thus, from the perspective of social action, moral regulation can be seen as the action that makes ideologies effective: education, persuasion, indoctrination, and so forth. Dean has looked at the matter from a more system-centered perspective. He says that, according to the “Corrigan and Sayer thesis,” moral regulation is the mechanism through which the process of State formation affects the process of cultural transformation (1994a:149; 1994b:149). Pg 280 … pg. 290

Thus, moral regulation seems to concern the aspect of social life to which, according to Purvis and Hunt, both the concept of “ideology” and that of “discourse” refer; “the idea that human individuals participate in forms of understanding, comprehension or conscious- ness of the relations and activities in which they are involved” (1993:474). In the defini- tion the reference to ontological and epistemological premises points clearly to this aspect: moral regulation is about affecting people’s beliefs about social relations and institutions.

But there is also another, I would say, Foucauldian element in how Corrigan and Sayer see moral regulation that can be found, for example, in their characterization of how the State takes part in moral regulation. They say that States state; they make statements that “define, in great detail, acceptable forms and images of social identity: they regulate, in empirically specifiable ways, much—very much, by the twentieth century—of social life” (Corrigan and Sayer 1985:3). Here the emphasis is on molding the self-image of people and the moral evaluation of social practices. The State is seen as imposing on people certain kinds of social identities and “proper forms of expression” (see, e.g., Corrigan 1990:109) and excluding others: people are made to see themselves as males or females, adults or children, heterosexuals or homosexuals, and so on.

Moral regulation is a special kind of social control. Its target is primarily how people see themselves and their ways of life, and its method is persuasion rather than coercion. I have also emphasized moral regulation as action taking place in a social relation between the regulator and the regulated.

What I have specifically attempted is to distinguish moral regulation from social control per se. Moral regulation is a special kind of social control. Its target is primarily how people see themselves and their ways of life, and its method is persuasion rather than coercion. I have also emphasized moral regulation as action taking place in a social relation between the regulator and the regulated. Page 290