{"id":25215,"date":"2016-09-23T09:44:05","date_gmt":"2016-09-23T14:44:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=25215"},"modified":"2016-09-08T13:17:30","modified_gmt":"2016-09-08T18:17:30","slug":"norms-normality-and-normativity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2016\/09\/23\/norms-normality-and-normativity\/","title":{"rendered":"Norms, Normality, and Normativity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Flashback Friday.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Sociologists distinguish between the terms norm, normal, and normative.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The <strong>norm<\/strong> refers to what is common or frequent.\u00a0 For example, celebrating Christmas is the norm in America.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Normal<\/strong> is opposed to abnormal.\u00a0 Even though celebrating Christmas is the norm, it is not abnormal to celebrate Hanukkah.\u00a0 To celebrate Hanukkah is perfectly normal.<\/li>\n<li>In contrast to both of these, <strong>normative<\/strong> refers to a morally-endorsed ideal. Some Americans make a normative argument that Americans <em>should<\/em> celebrate Christmas because they believe (wrongly) that this is a Christian country.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>A thing can be the norm but not be normative.\u00a0For example, a nuclear family with a married man and woman and their biological children is normative in the U.S., but it is certainly not the norm. Likewise, something can be normal but not the norm. It&#8217;s perfectly normal, for example, to date people of\u00a0the same sex (so say the scientists of our day), but it&#8217;s not the norm. And something can be both normal and the norm, but not be normative, like Americans&#8217; low rates of physical activity.<\/p>\n<p>These three terms do not always work in sync, which is why they&#8217;re interesting.<\/p>\n<p>I thought of these distinctions when I looked at a submission by Andrew, who blogs at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ethnographer.com\/?p=78\" target=\"_blank\">Ethnographer<\/a>. Bike lanes in Philadelphia used to be designated with this figure:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2010\/07\/17.jpg\" data-rel=\"lightbox-image-0\" data-rl_title=\"\" data-rl_caption=\"\" title=\"\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-25231\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2010\/07\/17.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Today, however, they&#8217;re designated by this one:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2010\/07\/24.jpg\" data-rel=\"lightbox-image-1\" data-rl_title=\"\" data-rl_caption=\"\" title=\"\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-25230\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2010\/07\/24.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Do you see the difference? The new figures are wearing bike helmets. The addition is normative. It suggests that bikers <em>should <\/em>be wearing bike helmets. It may or may not be the norm, and it certainly isn&#8217;t normal or abnormal either way, but the city of Philadelphia is certainly attempting to make helmets normative.<\/p>\n<p><em>Originally posted in 2010.<\/em><\/p>\n<span class=\"ft_signature\"><em><a href=\"http:\/\/lisa-wade.com\/\">Lisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/American-Hookup-New-Culture-Campus\/dp\/039328509X?ie=UTF8&amp;*Version*=1&amp;*entries*=0\">American Hookup<\/a><em>, a book about college sexual culture; a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Gender-Interactions-Institutions-Lisa-Wade\/dp\/0393931072?ie=UTF8&amp;*Version*=1&amp;*entries*=0\">textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/lisa-wade.com\/intro\/\">Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a><em>.\u00a0You can follow her on <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/lisawade\">Twitter<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/lisawadephd\/\">Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Flashback Friday. Sociologists distinguish between the terms norm, normal, and normative. The norm refers to what is common or frequent.\u00a0 For example, celebrating Christmas is the norm in America. Normal is opposed to abnormal.\u00a0 Even though celebrating Christmas is the norm, it is not abnormal to celebrate Hanukkah.\u00a0 To celebrate Hanukkah is perfectly normal. In [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":69341,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[293,23622,307],"class_list":["post-25215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-social-construction","tag-social-construction-symbols","tag-traveltourism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2010\/07\/1-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25215"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25215\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":69343,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25215\/revisions\/69343"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}