Thrown rags or tidy marital wardrobe?
Speaking about norms, normality and changes in society, M. Pivoriūtė remembers thinking as a child that the common expression “tossing rags”, which means romantic partners living together, actually means throwing clothes in a common pile.
“When people said that someone had thrown away rags, I imagined how a couple who had just moved into an apartment to live together threw their clothes in a pile in some corner. I wondered why throwing away those rags is such an essential thing that defines a relationship and how it happens that marriage enables people to fold their clothes and put them neatly in the closet?”, the sociologist laughs.
A little later, she says that she noticed that the difference between marriage and “disposing of rags” is highlighted even more by the economic situation of the partners.
“I used to read the newspaper while having breakfast and I noticed that people who don’t have money, drink or fight are called roommates, and various famous people, basketball players who have a lot of money – heart friends. Then I thought – how is it that if you have money, you can have both a heart and her friend, otherwise – only a roommate?”, M. Pivoriūtė smiles.
The sociologist notes that even 30 years ago, living together without marriage was an almost immoral phenomenon, which many chose to hide in order to avoid gossip. Meanwhile, in modern society, the decision to live together only after marriage is more likely to raise eyebrows.
Nowadays, living together without marriage is as normal a practice as marriage, and there are also more and more couples who do not end their relationship with it – this illustrates that in a relatively short time, accepted norms in society can be turned upside down.
We think about rules when they are broken
According to M. Pivoriūtė, all social situations in which we find ourselves in our daily lives have their own rules of the game, but we often think about their existence only when someone plays without following them. As the American sociologist Peter L. Berger has observed, society can exist because most of its members almost always define the most important social situations in at least roughly the same way.
Although not necessarily all members of society enthusiastically support these rules, by not opposing them and not questioning them we become their accomplices, we continue to consolidate them. However, M. Pivoriūtė points out that sometimes almost everyone of us finds ourselves in a situation where we are contemporaries of the creation of these rules, who can contribute to their redrawing.
“Another favorite sociologist of mine, Harold Garfinkel, liked to do experiments on violations of social norms. He observed that all our daily interactions and communication with each other have certain routines and pre-known unwritten rules that act on us like instincts.
H. Garfinkel would give his students tasks to deliberately break those rules and observe what was happening, for example, when they returned home, communicate with their parents as if they were their tenants. After a few days like this, there would probably be concern about what is happening here,” says the sociologist.
We can change the norms ourselves
M. Pivoriūtė states that such questioning and violation of normal norms allows one to notice what they are based on and realize that norms are not as self-explanatory, “natural” as they seem at first glance.
“Ten years ago, a story was heard in the media when the residents of Šilute were scared by a man walking slowly backwards. This behavior is harmless to the public, but people called the emergency services for him. Such an event encourages you to consider where the limit is, when you can still do something abnormal and no one will intervene, and what do you do when society already calls the police or an ambulance? Meanwhile, today some health experts say that walking backwards can be good for health, but a person who does it seems abnormal to us,” says the scientist.
Although we don’t even think about a large part of society’s norms in our daily life, some of them can be frustrating or even offensive. Nevertheless, according to M.Pivoriūtė, without the existence of norms or other constructed indicators of normality, we would have a million options on how to behave in different situations – this would lead to great chaos and require great mental resources even in simple everyday situations.
“Norms allow many individuals with different interests, desires and needs to coexist in society. However, this does not mean that we cannot question them, as in the aforementioned experiments, or initiate changes,” the sociologist thinks.
MO Museum’s exhibition “This is not with us” also invites us to question the usual societal norms surrounding family and romantic relationships, intimacy, and sexuality. Visitors can visit the exhibition until September 8.
#Sociologist #Pivoriūtė #norms #coexist #change #Culture
2024-07-31 00:34:30
