Social Rules Project
Due: 1pm, Thursday, August 30; must be uploaded to dropbox
Your assignment for the first week of classes might sound simple: find a social situation, determine a "social rule" in effect in the situation, violate that rule, and see what happens. How do people react when you do something "wrong"? What counts as "wrong" or "inappropriate"? How hard is for you to do something you know to be "wrong"?
It should go without saying, but please do not cause any harm to yourself or other people. As fun as it might be to break the law and blame this class, the anthropology department legal fund is depleted.
Your writing should include three clear paragraphs:
1) one describing the situation you entered, the social rule you noticed, what you did, and the reactions you got;
2) a second describing what this might say about society and / or culture;
3) how you felt conducting this assignment.
A few possible (and possibly less embarrassing) suggestions:
I have noticed that when I return to the US from work in Japan, I always walk on the wrong side of the sidewalk and it seems to fluster people. (Japanese people drive on the left side and most people seem to walk left, too.) You could try to walk left for one day and record the results.
Elevators could be a gold mine. What happens if you stand facing the side or back?
You don't need to draw a huge amount of attention to yourself to get a reaction out of people. For instance, you could stand on a corner yelling and record how passers-by react, but part of the beauty of this project is how little you have to do, how much people notice small deviations from the norm. Look at someone a little too long, or sit a little too close to someone (either a stranger or a friend), and most people will notice. How can you tell that they noticed? Be sure to record, and think about, your own reactions, too.
In previous years, a few students have thought about breaking the social rule of doing homework, i.e.: this project, by not doing it at all. That's a clever idea, but it means you'll be unable to turn in a reaction paragraph on time. Alas...
For your further consideration, please check out this New York Times article discussing Stanley Milgram's similar project about breaking social rules on New York subways.
