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American Sociological Review.
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DONALD BLACK
Harvard Law School
The sociological theory of social control predicts and explains how people define and
respond to deviant behavior. One kind of social control is known as self-help: the
expression of a grievance by unilateral aggression such as personal violence or
property destruction. It is commonly believed that self-help was largely displaced by
law in the Western world during the Middle Ages, and that it has survived primarily
in the traditional-especially stateless-societies studied by anthropologists. In fact,
much of the conduct classified as crime in modern societies such as the United States
is similar to these traditional modes of social control and may properly' be
understood as self-help. Several implications follow, including the possibility of
predicting and explaining a significant amount of crime with a sociological theory of
self-help, itself a branch of the theory of social control.
There is a sense in which conduct regardedas help in traditionaland modern settings, the
criminalis often quite the opposite. Far from followingpages brieflyexamine in turnthe so-
being an intentionalviolation of a prohibition, called strugglebetween law and self-help, the
much crime is moralisticand involves the pur- deterrenceof crime, the processingof self-help
suit of justice. It is a mode of conflict manage- by legal officials, and, finally, the problemof
ment, possibly a form of punishment, even predictingand explaining self-help itself.
capitalpunishment.Viewed in relationto law,
it is self-help. To the degree that it defines or
TRADITIONALSELF-HELP
respondsto the conduct of someone else-the
victim-as deviant, crime is social control.' Much of the conduct described by an-
And to this degree it is possible to predictand thropologists as conflict management, social
explain crime with aspects of the sociological control, or even law in tribal and other
theory of social control, in particular, the traditional societies is regarded as crime in
theory of self-help.2After an overview of self- modernsocieties. This is especially clear in the
case of violent modes of redress such as assas-
* Direct all correspondence to: Donald Black,
sination, feuding, fighting, maiming,and beat-
Center for Criminal Justice, Harvard Law School, ing, but it also applies to the confiscation and
Cambridge, MA 02138.
Support for this work was provided by the Pro-
destructionof property and to other forms of
gram in Law and Social Science of the. National deprivationand humiliation.Such actions typi-
Science Foundation. A number of people made cally express a grievance by one person or
helpful comments on an earlier draft: M. P. Baum- group against another (see Moore,
gartner, John L. Comaroff, Mark Cooney, Jack P. 1972:67-72). Thus, one anthropologistnotes
Gibbs, Richard 0. Lempert, Craig B. Little, Sally that among the Bena Bena of highland New
Engle Merry, Alden D. Miller, Calvin K. Morrill, Guinea, as among most tribes of that region,
Trevor W. Nagel, Lloyd E. Ohlin, and Alan Stone. "ratherthanbeing proscribed,violent self-help
A longer version of this paper will appear in is prescribed as a method of social control"
Toward a General Theory of Social Control, edited
by Donald Black (New York: Academic Press,
(Langness, 1972:182).3The same mightbe said
1983). of numerous societies throughoutthe world.
1 The concept of social control employed here re- On the other hand, violence is quite rare in
fers specifically-and exclusively-to any process manytraditionalsocieties, and at least some of
by which people define or respond to deviant be-
havior (Black, 1976:105). This is a broad category
that includes such diverse phenomena as a frown or thus distinguishable from social control through third
scowl, a scolding or reprimand, an expulsion from an parties such as police officers or judges and from
organization, an arrest or lawsuit, a prison sentence, avoidance behavior such as desertion and divorce.
commitment to a mental hospital, a riot, or a military (This conception of self-help derives from work in
reprisal. But this concept entails no assumptions or progress with M. P. Baumgartner.)
implications concerning the impact of social control I Illustrations of traditional self-help are given
upon conformity, social order, or anything else, nor here in the present tense (known as the "ethno-
does it address the subjective meanings of social graphic present" in anthropology), though many of
control for those who exercise or experience it. the practices to be surveyed have changed
2 For these purposes, self-help refers to the ex- considerably-if not disappeared altogether-since
pression of a grievance by unilateral aggression. It is they were originally observed.
34 American Sociological Review 1983, Vol. 48 (February:34-45)
to those withgrievancesand to those who have tions besides the availability of law are relevant to
offended them, is seen where people of high the incidence of self-help in each of its various man-
status, and also people who are strangers,have ifestations. After all, no effort has been made here to
conflicts with each other. Here self-helpseems develop a comprehensive theory of self-help. The
to be relatively infrequent. In sum, law and analysis has been intended merely to indicate the
relevance of such a theory and to offer a single for-
mulation that it might include. Furthermore, it
should be clear that despite the emphasis upon con-
ing to handle their own grievances. It appears, in temporary society in the present discussion, a
fact, that this extreme is almost reached by so-called sociological theory of self-help would ideally apply
totalitarian societies, such as the Soviet Union under to all instances of this phenomenon, traditional as
Stalin or Germany under Hitler, where the state in- well as modern.
sinuates itself throughout the population by actively '5 This is not to deny that the definition of conduct
encouraging citizens to make use of its coercive ap- as criminal may be relevant to its form and fre-
paratus however they see fit. Since apparently nearly quency. Even so, a given category of crime may
anyone can have nearly anyone else sent to prison, share more with particular kinds of noncriminal con-
each person is dangerous to others, and yet vulnera- duct than with other crime. The use of illicit drugs is
ble to them at the same time (see Gross, 1983). The seemingly more similar to the legal consumption of
result seems almost what Hobbes called a "war of alcoholic beverages than to robbery or rape, for
every one against every one," but within the frame- example, and extortion is seemingly closer to the
work of a state. Under these conditions, self-help practices of many landlords, physicians, and corpo-
tends to wither away. rations than to vandalism, trespassing, or treason.