Assignment: SOC 101

Value: 100 points

Due date: beginning of class on Monday, May 9th (hard copies only!! no exceptions!).

Length: 1200 words, with word count typed at the top of the paper. 

Instructions:

According to Harold Garfinkel’s concept of “breaching,” it is clear that violating social norms can be a very effective way to gain a greater understanding of how sociological concepts work in everyday life. Your assignment will be to design a type of breach that can be done SEVERAL times, write down people’s reactions to your norm breaking, and then write a report in which you show how your breaching exercise helped demonstrate ONE sociological concept. Each Friday of the semester you should devote this class time to the breaching project. Here are the instructions:

1)    Design your breach. The breach must be: a) performed alone; no one can “help” you or be a partner with you in this assignment; b) totally legal and should not require the intervention of law enforcement or mental health authorities; c) simple enough to be repeated at least a couple of times so that you can learn to “get it right.”

2)    Perform your breach. Keep in mind that more observations can be made if the breaching experiment you do is replicated in more than one location. Try to maintain focus throughout your breach that you are doing this for a reason and try as hard as you can to not let the pressure to “act normal again” and conform dissuade you from doing it.

3)    Take notes on what reactions you observed. This will be crucial to your write-up of the exercise. Have a notepad nearby so that you can immediately document what people’s reactions were to your behavior. Do not analyze these reactions; just write them down entirely descriptively. Did people laugh, frown, shuffle their feet, etc.?

4)    Write-up. In 1200 words (no less) explain: a) briefly describe the type of breach you performed and in what location(s); b) summarize some of the responses you received from this breach; c) analyze their reactions according to ONE concept we have covered this semester. Think about all of the concepts we have covered (anomie, stigma, passing, covering, moral entrepreneurs, innovation, etc.) and choose one to cover at length. In this part of the paper you will show how the reactions that people exhibited show how such a concept can be seen in everyday life.