Description
One approach to understanding the social order is to breach it. Ethnomethodologists often attempt to understand the taken-for-granted aspects of everyday life by breaching reality. For this assignment you are to conduct a breaching experiment. This experiment will require you to violate the trust of others by breaking the social script, which is often the world-taken-for granted. You must make mental observations while conducting this breach and then craft a meaningful analysis of this experience using the course materials as a framework. You are to select a norm that interests you. Preferably, this will be a norm that is a part of your ongoing social routine.
You must address all of the following points in your essay:
- Describe the social norm that you violated. What is the norm? How does it act to maintain social order? In other words, what is the function of this norm? What are the social expectations surrounding this norm? Describe the setting (social context) where the norm breach took place.
- How did you violate the social norm? Describe in detail how you violated the social norm.
- Describe how others reacted. Why do you think they reacted this way? Hint: if you get no reaction, you haven’t violated a social norm well enough to evaluate. You’ll have to try again in a different social context or use a different norm.
- Describe how you felt while violating the social norm. Why do you think you felt this way? What does this reveal about the power of social structure and expectations around normative behavior?
- Connect your analysis to at least one course reading (chapter) from the class. Your connections must be logical and relevant. You should apply your experience to the theory or theories from the reading(s). Make sure you cite your sources properly in-text. Do not bring in outside sources! Hint: describing how your experience is related to and/or valuable to ethnomethodology and theories of reality would be most useful (Building and Breaching Reality – Module 2).