Page 173 - The Handbook of Persuasion and Social Marketing

Social Marketing as Social Control 165

(1883) considered sociology’s ultimate purpose to be informing the lay
public—but even more important, policy analysts and government ad-
ministrators—about the best way to apply knowledge of social forces to-
ward the amelioration of human social problems. The ultimate payoff
would emerge in the form of meliorism, which is the improvement of so-
ciety by society stripped of all sentiment. This development would emerge
through use of the traditional methods of the natural sciences to under-
stand and then harness social forces toward the shaping of human better-
ment, and it would be the primary function of government to use its power
and allocate resources toward the fulfillment of that goal.
Ward (1883) believed that the discovery of truth and the reduction of
error would be a slow, deliberate, evolutionary process, lurching forward
in fits and starts through trial and error, key experiments, and intellectual
innovations and breakthroughs. With his idea of scientific truth opening
up in a sure but slow and methodological way, Ward was by no means
exhibiting the revolutionary zeal of Marxists. In the late 19th century,
Ward saw pressing social problems all around him, but it would have been
a mistake, and a violation of the spirit of careful and measured scientific
inquiry—represented by the slow and steady move from the pure to the
applied stage—to allow passions to triumph over reason and intellect.
However, for the most part, contemporary social marketers do not take
the path Ward (1883) espoused for sociology and instead are much more
likely to favor the sort of rapid social change typical of a broadly evaluative
or a specifically Marxist orientation. From the perspective of social mar-
keting, there are pressing problems in the world—many of them described
as public health crises—that demand quick action. The assumption is that
we cannot wait around for long-term cultural change to take effect as at-
titudes or behaviors gradually change, reflecting an incremental improve-
ment in social or health conditions. Instead, we must use whatever tools of
influence or persuasion are at our disposal in an attempt to inculcate
wholesale and perhaps rapid changes in behavior, rather than focusing
simply on attitude adjustment. Many practitioners believe that there is no
need to wring their hands over figuring out the first principles underlying
and producing unwanted health outcomes; that is to say, they believe there
is no need for social marketing to pass through the pure knowledge stage.
Indeed, we can borrow pertinent first principles from neighboring disci-
plines—biology, sociology, psychology, anthropology, economics, political
science, history, and so forth—and move right into the applied stage, fash-
ioning interventions through law and the administrative apparatus of gov-
ernment in areas of the world deemed in need of help or repair (Rothschild,
1999).