Sociology, according to the textbook, is a formation of knowledge about social reality and the changes in it, explains the logic of social development processes, helps a person determine his place in society, to choose a life path and find out life prospects, concentrate personal efforts on solving social contradictions. Today, the social behavior at the table is based on the requirements of aesthetics.
Discrepancies in the unwritten rules of behavior at the table in different countries depend on cultural norms, tastes, on the national cuisine. For my assignment, I chose to violate one of the social norms eating in a public place by burping. And see how the social control mechanism that includes two main elements; norms and sanctions, will work with that violation.
I was invited to attend an anniversary of my close friends. There were 5 girls sitting at my table. This can considered as my primary group, because wherever we go, we go together, we have common taste, we like the same type of music, and have same point of view on the life. The age range was between 30- 45. We had an interesting discussion about what’s going on in the fashion world, what color is on the trend right now. Each of us, showed good manner by eating, talking , and acting aesthetically because, we as a representatives of “not too young” girls, wanted to teach good manners, manners of ladies, to the young girls sitting a little bit far from us. Then…
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I started to burp, letting them to be surprised because they had never seen me doing that kind of things. Believe me, it was given hard to me, because I don’t have burping habits. By imitating the burp, I broke boundaries, my behavior was not perceived as normal, permissible in relation to this society, to my primary group. My friends looked at me very rigidly, but didn’t say anything. I heard some humor and whispers from the people sitting at the table next to ours.
I continued burping. Instead of saying sorry, I told them it is normal because when you swallow a hot food, lot of air enters the body to cool the food ( I was prepared, did some research on burning.) The air regulates the pressure in the stomach and the burp is happening. And for some chiefs burping is a kind of you grade their dish, like it shows you really like the food they made. But I predicted that my “high society” friends will not accept my attitude. And here came social control regulation of the human society, which sets the “order” of life and penalizes all who violate it.
For the following event, my friends didn’t invite me. As we know from our textbook, sanction is recognized as the main instrument of social control and is an incentive to comply with the norms, expressed in the form of encouragement (positive sanction) or punishment (negative sanction). I think, my friends appled the positive sanction on me, because after all I was able to understand the wrongness of my attitude by feel excluded, loneliness during the sanction until
I explained them that it was a part of my assignment in the studying of Sociology. Therefore, I would say, the social norms and social sanctions are inseparably whole, and a social norm accompanies a social sanction, and tougher they regulate the social function. I did learn that people will judge me regarding me attitude, and if you live in society you should accept norms that were created by influence of our surroundings, and makes us to behave in our daily lives appropriate to that sociological norms.
To summarize, when participating in collective actions, everyone must adapt to the requirements of others. A person can be a member of many groups (family, class, student group), and each small group has a well-established formal or informal “code” of behavior, their own social attitudes. Deviations from the correct behavior are condemned by the group. In the process of socialization, our desires, habits are formed, and the society strives to be as they are needed. Society functions normally only when its members want to act in the way that benefits society.
