How did the chicken cross the road?

Yesterday's Mindfulness Takeaway:
Gestures and language.  Why are these important?

Today: Cultural Norms - What is expected behavior?

Levine and Wolff published an article about different ways that social scientists researched time in various cultures.  See the article called Social Time here.

 Using the article, please answer these questions:

1. What is the authors' overall claim?

2. What evidence did the authors cite from Brazil?

3. What evidence does language provide?

4.  What other data did researchers use to study time around the world?

Here is more research about time around how time is socially constructed.

Different cultures' perceptions of time are another component of non-material culture called norms.

Norms are what a culture considers normal, acceptable behavior.  Norms vary around the world. One example of this is the norms centered around time. How do people from different cultures think about time differently? What do they consider late or early? These are norms.  Here is a list of other norms from around the world.  It is important to recognize these norms in cross-cultural communication. If we fail to acknowledge these differences we run the risk of offending someone or worse, a whole culture of people.

And this graphic explains varying norms from around the world.

When traveling to different cultures, 'how' the chicken crossed the road seems to be more relevant than 'why'. When I was in Italy, it took me six days to figure out how to cross the street. There were scooters and cars swerving everywhere and honking. Every time I tried to cross the street, cars would screech to a stop and swear at me in Italian. Then I figured out how to do it. Just walk a steady pace across the street and let them avoid you - and it worked! This knowledge of how to cross the street is an important norm, what sociologists call a more.   Mores are important to the order of a society. If you violate them, it will cause a disruption in the social setting. Other norms that are less important are called folkways. Folkways are not crucial to the order of society and if you were to violate a folkway people would not necessarily judge you. The more of how to cross a street can be found in lots of videos on youtube. Watch this video from India. Note how the person crossing the street is aware of the norms of traffic and so the pedestrian successfully crosses without getting hit. It is worth noting that these mores, although very important to the society, are not necessarily laws. Similar to the ideas of time being a social construct, they are just the way that people operate and even though they are not written into laws, they are important to the function of society. Watch this video of an intersection in India and think about who has the right of way? There may not be a law about it, but those drivers know what they are doing, but would an American?

Have you experienced a different set of norms from another culture either by traveling somewhere or by meeting a foreigner here in America? What was it like? Were there misunderstandings?
Something else that you might want to inquire about is another culture's norms;  where you would like to travel?  What are all of the norms you should know if you travel there?  Find out what unique norms exist in their culture. Here is a link to cultural etiquette around the world.

This port-a-potty was the creation of an artist in Switzerland.  Would you be able to use it?
It looks like this from the inside:

Would you be able to use a toilet if it looked like everyone could see you, even though you knew they could not? This is a taboo because even though people could not see us, the mere thought of them seeing us would make us hesitant. In other words, simply thinking about doing this is embarrassing and so we don't want to even think about it. Perhaps, that is why we have so many euphemisms for using the toilet: using the john, the restroom, the bathroom, the lavatory, the men's room, etc...

Takeaway:

Norms 

Folkways

Mores

Taboos

           

            Moral holidays

Moral holiday places

Sanctions 

For more info see Ferris and Stein 79-80