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Breaking Social Norms Paper

Decent Essays

Every society and culture has their own societal norms. These norms distinguish what kind of behavior people are expected to engage in. When a person behaves in a way that violates a particular society’s norms and a percentage of that society looks down upon that behavior, that person’s behavior would be classified as deviant (textbook 1). For example it is a societal norm in the United States for adult men to be employed, so people expect them to be employed. If a 30 year old male does not have a job, then people in his society would look upon him negatively, and the 30 year old would be categorized as a deviant. It is a social norm in the United States for people to go to college right after high school. If someone joined the military after high school so they could later attend college with financial help from the military, they probably would not be considered deviant. This is because even though they are breaking a social norm, they are not looked at negatively because of it. In this paper I am going to discuss what I observed when I engaged in behavior that broke my society’s norms. To break a social norm I decided to go to the University of Colorado book store on a Saturday afternoon and sing Rudolph the Red Nose …show more content…

However if one knew that I was acting against social norms for a class paper then there could be a theory to explain my behavior. One theory that fits is Durkheim Structural-functionalism theory. This theory suggests that every aspect of society that has withstood the test of time must have some function in that society (The Normal and the Pathological 45). So college students singing randomly in book stores may not seem to have a function, but the function is by singing in the stores, they will be able to write their paper and pass their class. So even though this behavior breaks societal norms, it is still present in today’s

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