I'm breached as bro

So this week we looked at the idea of breaching social norms, and ethnomethodology, which was also the topic that I presented on with Laura and Danni, here’s the link to our presentation. You should definitely watch the male bathroom etiquette video because while it is hilarious, it does show why we need social norms (even though it is heavily exaggerated).

SOC250 Group Presentation on Prezi

One of the key researchers in this area was Garfinkel, who carried out many experiments which came to be known as the ‘breaching experiments’. Basically, his students or researchers would go out into their normal lives, but would do something that would be considered out of the ordinary (Heritage, 1984). An example of one of these was individuals not following the general conventions of the game noughts and crosses (Heritage, 1984). However, other examples could include normal, able-bodied people asking for someone to give up their seat on a train for no good reason.

The main lesson learned from these experiments, I believe, is that people trust each other to maintain the ‘reciprocity of perspectives’ (Heritage, 1984, p. 82; Scannell, 2007). That is, that we trust those that we interact with to know and follow the unwritten social rules that define how we interact with one another. Further, it could be said that these rules enable humans to coexist with one another, and interact in such a way that our existence continues. For example, if we know someone who commonly breaches these rules or has no knowledge of them (they would probably be a sociopath), we would probably not interact with them. If we took it to the extreme end of the spectrum , where it got to the stage where this person could not even interact or behave properly in a public place, they would be detained by the police and segregated from society. This then demonstrates that the basic rules of coexistence are written into law and are strictly enforced by those holding authority.

While this is only beginning to scratch the surface of the idea of social norms and rules, as well as their exploration of ethnomethodology, it forms my basic understanding of what they are and why they are important to study. I’ll conclude with some basic student breaching experiments that I found on YouTube:

 

References

Heritage, J. 1984, ‘The Morality of Cognition’, in Garfinkel and ethnomethodology, Polity Press, Cambridge, pp 75-102

Scannell, P, 2007, ‘Communication as Interaction’, Media and Communication, Sage, London, UK, pp 145-168