norm

Examples of norm in the following topics:

• Norms

  • Explicit norms are often enforced by formal sanctions.
  • Groups may adopt norms in two different ways.
  • One form of norm adoption is the formal method, where norms are written down and formally adopted (e.g., laws, legislation, club rules).
  • Students demonstrate social norms of personal space by violating the norms.
  • In most Western countries, norms have prohibited same-sex marriage, but those norms are now changing.

• Norms and Sanctions

  • Norms are social rules of behavior, and a sanction is a form of punishment against violation of different norms.
  • The act of violating a social norm is called deviance.
  • Individuals usually have a much easier time identifying the transgression of norms than the norms themselves.
  • Like deviance, norms are always culturally contingent.
  • To understand the norm, one must understand the context.

• Nonmaterial Culture

  • Examples include any ideas, beliefs, values, or norms that shape a society.
  • Sociologists describe norms as laws that govern society's behaviors.
  • Values are related to the norms of a culture, but they are more global and abstract than norms.
  • Wearing dark clothing and appearing solemn are normative behaviors at a funeral.
  • Norms, values, and beliefs are all deeply interconnected.

• Childhood Socialization

  • Social norms pertaining to gender are developed through socialization, the lifelong process of inheriting, interpreting, and disseminating norms, customs, and ideologies.The process of socialization continues throughout one's life and is constantly renegotiated, but socialization begins as soon as one is born.
  • When a boy gets a football for his birthday and a girl receives a doll, this also socializes children to accept gender norms.
  • The example set by an individual's family is also important for socialization; children who grow up in a family with the husband a breadwinner and the wife a homemaker will tend to accept this as the social norm, while those who grow up in families with female breadwinners, single parents, or same-sex couples will develop different ideas of gender norms.
  • Because gender norms are perpetuated immediately upon birth, many sociologists study what happens when children fail to adopt the expected gender norms rather than the norms themselves.
  • This is the standard model of studying deviance in order to understand the norm that undergirds the deviant activity.

• Deviance

  • Deviance, in a sociological context, describes actions or behaviors that violate informal social norms or formally-enacted rules.
  • Among those who study social norms and their relation to deviance are sociologists, psychologists, psychiatrists, and criminologists, all of whom investigate how norms change and are enforced over time.
  • The second type of deviant behavior involves violations of informal social norms (norms that have not been codified into law) and is referred to as informal deviance.
  • Cultural norms are relative, which makes deviant behavior relative as well.
  • These rules are one example of how norms vary across cultures.

• Values

  • Values are related to the norms of a culture, but they are more global and abstract than norms.
  • Norms are rules for behavior in specific situations, while values identify what should be judged as good or evil.
  • Flying the national flag on a holiday is a norm, but it reflects the value of patriotism.
  • Members take part in a culture even if each member's personal values do not entirely agree with some of the normative values sanctioned in the culture.
  • Members of the punk movement refused to conform to some of the normative values prevalent in Western culture.

• Introduction to deviance

  • Deviance is any behavior that violates cultural norms.
  • The second type of deviant behavior refers to violations of informal social norms, norms that have not been codified into law, and is referred to as informal deviance.
  • Cultural norms are relative; this makes deviant behavior relative as well.
  • The norms and rules of the Christ Desert Monastery are examples of how norms are relative to cultures.
  • Sociological interest in deviance includes both interests in measuring formal deviance (statistics of criminal behavior; see below), examining how people (individually and collectively) define some things deviant and others normative, and a number of theories that try to explain both the role of deviance in society and its origins.

• The Role of Socialization

  • Socialization prepares people for social life by teaching them a group's shared norms, values, beliefs, and behaviors.
  • The belief that killing is immoral is an American norm, learned through socialization.
  • As children grow up, they are exposed to social cues that foster this norm, and they begin to form a conscience composed of this and other norms.
  • The role of socialization is to acquaint individuals with the norms of a given social group or society.  
  • Broadly defined, it is the process of transferring norms, values, beliefs, and behaviors to future group members.

• Introduction

  • Collective behavior might also be defined as action which is neither conforming (in which actors follow prevailing norms) nor deviant (in which actors violate those norms).
  • Collective behavior, a third form of action, takes place when norms are absent or unclear, or when they contradict each other.
  • 3) collective behavior generates weak and unconventional norms while groups tend to have stronger and more conventional norms

• The Functionalist Perspective on Deviance

  • Functionalism claims that deviance help to create social stability by presenting explanations of non-normative and normative behaviors.
  • On the one hand, this fractured society into those marked as homosexuals and those unmarked as normative heterosexuals.
  • Deviance allows for the majorities to unite around their normativity, at the expense of those marked as deviant.
  • From a structural functionalist perspective, then, how does society change, particularly in regards to establishing norms and deviant behaviors?
  • On the one hand, this fractured society into those marked as homosexuals and those unmarked as normative heterosexuals.