Description
Your initial posts need to be at least 350 words. Your replies need to be at least 150 words. These must be substantive contributions that reflect the weeks materials, not just opinion or simple statements like I agree. There will be an opportunity to makeup 1 discussion at the end of the semester.
You all have a lot of work this first module, so I want to do something that might be a little bit more fun, even if it means more work than, say, summarizing a reading. We’re going to try and do a breaching activity.
So part of the normal deviance class experience is being assigned to break some norm (think folkways, not mores – and definitely not taboos!). I want you do do that. Now, there are some ground rules I’m going to cover, and then you’ll have to answer a very specific set of questions about your experience.
Rules: Nothing illegal, nothing that will get you beaten up, don’t be mean, and must occur in public. There is a pandemic, so at home is perfectly fine. I’ll include some ideas to help you out at the end of this post.
Once you break your norm, I want you to:
- Describe what you did.
- Describe the reactions of people around you.
- Describe what norm you violated (what made it deviant).
For your reply, I want you to:
- Rate a classmate’s deviance on a scale of 1-10, 1 being not deviant at all and 10 being completely deviant.
- Be nice though.
- Explain why you gave the rating.
Hopefully this is fun, and doesn’t scar anyone.
Examples of what you can do: wear shoes that don’t match, wear a winter coat in summer, wear a stained shirt in public, stand backwards in an elevator, wear headphones but let your music play from your phone speakers, eat pizza with a fork or chop sticks, eat something not meant to be eaten by hand with your hands, answer someone with only questions, insist on paying too much for something at a store, wear a Halloween costume today, bring McDonalds to Burger King, order drinks that don’t match what’s expected for your gender, walk backwards, drive through campus jamming “Baby Shark” at full volume.
Things I’ve had students do that I wouldn’t recommend: fill a tray in the cafeteria with other people’s foods, go to a rural Walmart in drag and ask about makeup, fill your cart at the grocery store with items from other people’s carts, rearranging an entire rack of books at the bookstore, screaming at people, pantsing someone.
Have fun with this, but please don’t make me add to the “no-no” list.
I know I said no illegal activities, that includes COVID-19 protocols. Please don’t write about licking everything in WalMart, running around a retirement home massless, or anything like that.
