Social order

Change makes sense only against continuity, just as letters on a page are readable because they contrast with the background. Social order is the tendency within established social systems that resists and regulates change.

• Every society must reproduce itself and stay stable: people follow the same rules, similar actions bring similar results, and institutions behave predictably. Imagine a game whose rules changed every time you played.
• There is also a concrete reason: societies are stratified. Those who are favourably placed (in wealth, status and power) have a vested interest in stability; subordinated groups have a vested interest in change. 'Normal' conditions usually favour the rich and powerful.

Two ways social order is kept (every society uses both):

• Spontaneous consent: shared values and norms, internalised through socialisation. But socialisation can never turn people into programmed robots; beliefs that once seemed obviously right may later be questioned.
• Compulsion: power, the ability to make others do what you want regardless of what they want. A stable, settled power relationship is domination; in normal times domination can run 'smoothly', without open friction.

Domination, authority and law. Power works smoothly largely through legitimation: legitimacy is the degree of acceptance in a power relationship; something legitimate is accepted as proper, just and fitting.

• Max Weber defined authority as legitimate power. A police officer, a judge and a teacher each have authority, explicitly given by their jobs and limited to a domain: the judge in the courtroom, the teacher over pupils in the classroom (not in their homes), the police officer over citizens' public actions. Less formal authority belongs to religious leaders, famous scholars and artists, and even gang leaders.
• A law is an explicitly codified norm or rule, usually written down, made in a democracy by elected representatives, and binding on all citizens, whether or not an individual agrees with it.
• Domination works through a mix of legitimate, lawful authority and other kinds of power, some of them illegitimate.

Contestation, crime and violence. Order does not always meet obedience.

• Contestation means broad forms of insistent disagreement: youth rebellion and counter-cultures (in hairstyles, clothes, language, lifestyle), elections (political competition), and dissent or protest against laws. Social order does not mean everyone agrees: Indians share one Constitution but support different parties; everyone knows the traffic rules, yet argue on the road. How much dissent a society tolerates marks the boundary between legal and illegal, acceptable and unacceptable.
• A crime is simply an act that violates an existing law; its moral worth is a separate question. Freedom fighters deliberately broke laws they thought unjust, as part of Civil Disobedience.
• The modern state claims a monopoly over the legitimate use of violence within its territory: only its authorised functionaries may lawfully use force (with rare exceptions such as self-defence). Even an assault on one person is prosecuted by the state. Violence is the enemy of social order, a sign of serious social tensions and of the failure of consent.

Example (new): students who peacefully gather signatures to ask the school to change a uniform rule are contesting it within accepted limits; students who damage school property cross the boundary into an offence.