Violate a social norm essay

Prompt

Choose a social norm to violate (without breaking a law, doing
something unsafe, or missing or disrupting any classes). You should plan to
break your social norm in a public enough way that you can effectively assess
other people’s reactions. You should break
your chosen norm more than one time to achieve comparative and therefore
better, more reliable results.  You might
also consider breaking the norm in more than one place or time to gauge how
reactions (and your experience) changes over the course of the experiment. Consider
and discuss the time, place, and manner in which you violate your chosen norm
and who the audiences were. Don’t reveal to any audiences that this is an
assignment.

In your essay, clearly address (1) a description of what you
specifically did and how it violated a specific social norm, also identified
clearly; (2) your reactions while
violating the chosen social norm, (3)
a description of what the reactions by others were (did race, class, age,
gender, or any other demographic variable matter in their reactions?); and (4) a sociological analysis of numbers
2 and 3 above explaining why you may
have experienced the reactions you did. Your analysis should draw on
sociological concepts from our book and lectures, for example, possibly the
concepts of norms, deviance, social control, socialization, etc.

Papers must cite at
least one course reading and use
standard formatting and citations (see below).

Gathering
Data: Some Advice

As you collect data and engage in your deviance experiment, you
should take field notes to help you write your completed essay for the class.
These are very important for your success on this paper. Field notes are
observations that you record while “in the field,” or in other words, while out
at the location where/when you were breaking the social norm you chose. They can
be flushed out and expanded on immediately after you complete your experiment.

Your field notes should include observations about the following:

• The time, place, and manner in which you
  violated your social norm (describe what you did to violate the norm)
• Your reactions while violating the norm,
  including:
  • How did it feel to violate the social norm? What
    did you go through? Did your feelings change as you broke the norm more than
    once?
  • Did any audience reactions make you feel particularly
    strong, and in what way?
• The reactions of the audience(s) (how did people
  react? Did any particular demographic group react stronger than others?)

Your essay should be carefully planned, executed, and edited
to represent a college-level exploration of the essay topic in terms of writing
quality and critical thinking. Each
essay will be graded both for (1) its reflection of your ability to work with
sociological ideas in relation to mastery of course issues, and (2) its
demonstration of writing skills, including organization, grammar, syntax,
clarity, punctuation, spelling, appropriate formatting, etc.

Essay Elements

Your essay should have the following elements:

• A clear, underlined thesis statement
  (what is your argument?)
• (1) A description of what you specifically did
  and how it violated a particular social norm,
• (2) Your reactions while violating the chosen
  social norm,
• (3) A description of what the reactions by others
  were (did race, class, age, or any other demographic variable matter in their
  reactions?), and
• A sociological analysis of (2) and (3) above
  explaining why you believe you experienced
  the reactions you did, utilizing course material to provide support for your
  claims
• You must cite at least ONE course reading

Citations

You will NOT need to include a works cited page or
bibliography. You DO need to include in-text citations, however. In-text
citations should be either MLA or ASA format. Refer to this website on how to
cite readings in ASA style: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/583/2/.
When citing lectures, simply use the following format: (Miller, date of
lecture) aka (Miller, 1/27/14).

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