Break A Cultural Rule Of Coffee Shop

For this assignment, I decided to observe people’s interaction in Starbucks at level one of the Indiana Memorial Union (IMU), Indiana University. Starbucks is one of America’s coffee companies and coffee shop chains. Starbucks sells handcrafted coffee, tea, snacks and many more beverages. I decided to go to do my observation at Starbucks instead of other coffee shops because in my opinion, Starbucks is one of the famous coffee shops among Americans—so more people will come there to buy coffee, to hang out with their friends or even just to warm themselves up from the cold weather. Because of that, I went to observe students and other people who are in Starbucks at IMU. At this Starbucks, there is a stage at the back of the coffee shop for people to make performance and in between of the stage and the counter, there are lots of tables and chairs for customers to sit down.

Norms are constantly changing and different in every culture. Norms are usually unnoticed in our society. There are folkways and mores norms. Folkway norms specify proper behaviors and are less violent and just rude which are stated was “weak”. Mores norms are “stronger” norms which violates more demands. We’re taught wrongs and rights while we’re kids like sneezing into your elbow and using manners. Other things are just common sense like facing forwards the doors in an elevator. In our culture standing backwards in the elevator is not normal. People walk in and turn around to face the door. For this assignment, I decided to break that norm. I was leaving a doctor’s appointment and had to take an elevator down to the first floor. I was about to turn around like a normal human but I remembered this essay and thought it was the perfect opportunity with an elevator full of people.

Coffee is a beverage that is globally consumed, but also a product that has different values in different parts of the world. The role coffee plays in society differs around the world, from the farmers who grew the crops to the people who constantly consume them. Social theoretical perspectives are capable of showing the different roles coffee has in different societies. Symbolic interactionism, functionalism, and Marxism are three theories which show coffee’s role sociologically. These theories show how coffee affects people physically, how it affects them emotionally, how it leads them to have interactions, how it connects different parts of society, and how it’s economically controlled by a select few.

Most individuals in society are conformist and make sure to stay in the loop. For my experiment, I decided to break the social norm of small talk in public restrooms. Everyone knows to go to the restroom, do their duty, wash your hands and go on your way. Individuals do not take the time to socialize while in the stall especially when someone is focused on not making too much noise. So, what I had done was start small talk with other women who would go into the stall next to me and even got a little personal which would cause embarrassment. With this in mind, I imagined girls would just simply ignore my comments or even ask me to leave them alone; also, older women would respond kinder than a teenager.

As we know, norms are social expectations that guide our behavior. In this paper, I will discuss norm violations that I’ve observed, and my own personal norm violation that I committed. I will describe what happened, what was done, and the reactions of the people around when these norms begat. I will also discuss the significance of folkways, mores, values, and sanctions to my observations.

Social conventions are unwritten rules in society that are treated as the norm and as such, can be misinterpreted as the right thing to do, making them very hard to oppose. However, in truth, following social norms is not always the correct thing to do. Budge Wilson’s short

Coffee, the bean we love. To many it is known as the magic elixir, brain juice, or nectar of the gods, while others see it as the devil in a cup. America is a country that is obsessed with its coffee, now more than ever before. Although coffee has spanned generations, the craze did not exist like it does today. According to anthropologist William Roseberry of UBC, coffee was on the decline in the 1960’s and hit an all time low in the 90’s with only half the country drinking about a cup a day (D’Costa). However, with coffee being the world’s most commonly traded commodity, second to crude oil, much money is at stake when people stop drinking it. Thus the coffee empire was rebuilt, coffee revamped, and redefined to suit the needs of the “me

As we know, norms are social expectations that guide our behavior. In this paper, I will discuss norm violations that I’ve observed, and my own personal norm violation that I committed. I will describe what happened, what was done, and the reactions of the people around when these norms begat. I will also discuss the significance of folkways, mores, values, and sanctions to my observations.

On Monday, October 17 from one p.m. until two p.m. I observed people’s behavior in Starbucks on Clemson University campus. The majority of the population consisted of students most likely ranging from eighteen years old to twenty-four years old. This time of day seemed to be particularly busy, and from where I was sitting I observed human behavior as they interacted within the space. The room itself had an ordering area, an area to gather while waiting for your drink, and then multiple seating arrangements, such as booths, high tables, large tables, and small tables. Even with all the furniture the space had little obstructions, making it easy to oversee activity.

From what I experienced doing this to other people, most behaved like the two girls mentioned. There would be a few stares that led to confused questioning about what I was doing and if I needed something. After the questioning, I found that people would resort to joking about what I was doing to ease their tension, especially if there were in a group of people. If there were walking alone they would try and get me to say something to them. Me not talking or saying anything was probably the most confusing element about me violating their personal space. After all of this people would just walk into store to get me to stop walking with them. There were not mad, just mostly confused and slightly annoyed.

Every culture has taboos, a cultural standard of shared values and appropriate practices. They can cover behavior, clothing choice, food, sexual activity, even social perception. These cultural rules ensure a cohesive environment where nobody feels uneasy about the actions of others. Yet, some taboos get challenged through individuals rebelling or using the breaking of a taboo to establish dominance, or another social group disregarding another cultures taboo even though it could lead to social punishment.

Within a given society, there is a certain set of cultural norms which are used in daily interactions with people. The collective majority in society establishes these unspoken rules of conduct. How a person should behave is regulated by these social norms, and, when they are violated, a person or group is labelled deviant or abnormal. Some forms of aberrant behavior have remained universal throughout space and time and continue to be rejected by society. Culture heavily influences human behavior and thought processes.

Every day social order is taken for granted. Social order is related to social realities, which are shared expectations about a chain of events, the types of people involved and associated behaviors and feelings (O’Brien, 2011). It is not until someone violates these realities and interactional routines that they recognize the difference and become aware. For this reason, during the 1950s, Harold Garfinkel developed the breaching experiment; a breaching experiment is an activity used in social science to breach or violate common, taken-for-granted understandings and practices of everyday life in order to better understand it. This showed that reality maintenance requires a lot of interactional work. The objective of a breaching experiment is to disrupt normal procedures so that the process by which everyday life is constructed or reconstructed can be observed and studied. An example of one of the breaching experiments Garfinkel did, was when he asked students to spend time in their homes “acting” like boarders—asking permission, being polite and formal, etc. The results concluded that students reported family members who expressed shock, anxiety, embarrassment and anger towards their behaviors. Some of the implications of this is that it is important that people act in accord with commonsense assumptions with how they are supposed to behave. Therefore, we are all participants in the construction and maintenance of everyday cultural realities (O’Brien, p. 343-348, 2011).

When the time arrived for actually breaking the norm, I was scared since I don’t know what the other person’s reaction would be. As I am facing the people on the elevator, I started to see the awkward look coming from the people and I was feeling uncomfortable. There were some people who would just look at their phone or look the other way as I make eye contact with them. The reason I felt uncomfortable because no one usually make eye contact inside the

Nowadays, coffee become something that is very important for coffee lover to start the day or just to hang out with friends coffeehouse has become more familiar feature of Malaysian life. Every day, thousands of people will stop for an espresso based coffee drink. People who would not have dreamed of spending more than RM2.00 to RM3.00 for a cup of coffee a few years ago now gladly pay RM18 to RM22 for light coffee and snacks.