This fall, I took part in a social norm experiment in which I purchased one item from the produce section at the grocery store and gauged the reactions of fellow customers and store staff. I chose to buy one green bean at two of the stores and then one cherry tomato at the other. My hypothesis was that I would get funny looks and encounter some confusion. What I didn’t expect was a breakthrough in my thinking when I realized that doing something so small, like purchasing a small amount of food was looked at as preposterous in America, yet if i did the same thing in another part of the world, I wouldn’t garner any strange looks at all. This got me thinking about the wasteful culture we live in. Throwing away massive amounts of food is the “norm” in this part of the world, yet buying only what you might eat for one meal is scrutinized. I tried to put myself into what a typical scenario would be in parts of the world like Africa (which, no, doesn’t have a Giant Food Store, but work with me on this suspension of disbelief). If I was to buy one cherry tomato in Africa, people would assume that was my meal. That might be all the food that someone has access to in some parts of the world, yet we buy food by the bushel in Western cultures. The lesson I walked away with was, it is always important to practice cultural relativism in all facets of your life. By only thinking of your comfort zone, you run the risk of ostracizing others and making them feel unwelcome and along for practicing a tradition that is commonplace where they are from. This was an interesting experiment and a fascinating way to look at research.
This ethnomethological research teaches us that many people have a hard time recognizing their own social norms. Usually people go along with what is expected of them and the existence of norms only becomes apparent when they are violated. It’s a distinct approach to sociological inquiry, one that painstakingly analyzes and describes the various methods by which members of a social group maintain the orderliness and sensibility of their everyday worlds. “Ethnomethodology involves acting critically about social interactions. Garfinkel and his followers became famous for their “breaching experiments. They would send their students into the social world to see what happened when they breached social norms.” (Conley p.143). I find all social norms experiments to be both amusing and educational. It’s interesting to see how people react to the smallest changes in society, no matter how innocent the “violation” is.
Conley, D. (2015). You may ask yourself: An introduction to thinking like a sociologist. New York, NY, United States: W. W. Norton & Company
de Garis, (2013, March 22) Interview: Kelli Mccluskey Talks Deviator. Retrieved on December 2, 2017 from: http://performinglineswa.org.au/2013/03/interview-kelli-mccluskey-talks-deviator-at-pica/
