Week 3 Sociology in Action Workshop: Norms in the Wild

Part 1 — The Big Picture

This week you learned that every group runs on norms, and that you can ask two separate questions of any norm: how much moral weight it carries, and how the group enforces it. In this workshop you leave the page and watch norms at work. You spend 20 minutes in a shared public space, such as a library lobby, a bus stop, a food court, or a gym, and log eight norms you see people keep or break. Then you sort each one, tally your sort in a spreadsheet, read one norm through the three perspectives, and check whether your own reactions were judging or understanding. Finally you ask a chatbot about a similar log and catch where it goes wrong, the way you will check any claim about culture in the rest of this course.

Time budget: Plan for about 90 minutes.

Part 2 — The Task

Guiding question: In one shared public space, which kinds of norms do people keep and break, how are those norms enforced, and what can a 20-minute log honestly tell you about the culture of that place?

Before you begin — hypothesis: Before you observe, write one if… then… because… sentence that predicts which kind of norm, folkway, mos, or taboo, you will log most often and whether those norms will be enforced mostly formally or informally, and why you expect that.

Workshop data: your own 20-minute norm observation log (or the illustrative library-and-café log)

Source: Data you collect yourself by watching a shared public space for 20 minutes and logging eight norms you see kept or broken; if you cannot observe, use the illustrative library-and-café log printed in the fallback, which was constructed for this workshop and is not from a real place.

• Rows: 8 logged norms per student (the observation scaffold has 8 rows; the illustrative fallback log also has 8 rows)
• Columns: setting and moment; the norm; kept or broken; moral weight; sanction seen; positive or negative; formal or informal
• Categories: moral weight is folkway, mos, or taboo; a sanction is positive or negative and formal or informal

Part 3 — Materials & Procedure

Tools and materials

• Free public data tables (Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Pew Research Center, World Bank, Our World in Data, General Social Survey) plus a spreadsheet (Google Sheets or any free spreadsheet)
• A notebook or a notes app for your observation log

Ways of working

• apply-a-perspective-to-a-case
• read-and-interpret-social-data
• structured-observation-and-reflection

Procedure

1. Choose a shared public space where you can sit for 20 minutes, such as a library lobby, a bus stop, a food court, a gym, or a waiting room. Watch without joining in, and do not photograph, record, or name anyone; note only what people do. Write your if… then… because… prediction first. Tool: A notebook or a notes app for your observation log. Check: A written prediction and a quiet spot from which you can see people come and go.
2. During the 20 minutes, log eight norms you see kept or broken in the observation table in Part 4: the setting and moment, the norm in a few words, and whether it was kept or broken. Note any reaction you see. Tool: A notebook or a notes app for your observation log. Check: Eight rows, each naming one expected behavior and what happened.
3. After you leave, sort each row: write folkway, mos, or taboo in the moral-weight column, and for every sanction you saw, write positive or negative and formal or informal. Write none seen when there was no reaction. Check: Every row has a moral-weight label, and every sanction you saw has two labels.
4. Open a blank sheet. Type your eight moral-weight labels in cells A2 to A9. In B2 type =COUNTIF(A2:A9,"folkway"), in B3 =COUNTIF(A2:A9,"mos"), and in B4 =COUNTIF(A2:A9,"taboo"). In C2 type =B2/8*100 and copy it to C3 and C4. Copy the counts and shares into the tally table in Part 4. Tool: Free public data tables (Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Pew Research Center, World Bank, Our World in Data, General Social Survey) plus a spreadsheet (Google Sheets or any free spreadsheet). Check: The three counts add up to 8 and the three shares add up to 100.
5. Type the formal-or-informal label of each sanction you saw in column D, starting at D2. In E2 type =COUNTIF(D2:D9,"formal") and in E3 =COUNTIF(D2:D9,"informal"), and copy both counts into the tally table. Tool: Free public data tables (Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Pew Research Center, World Bank, Our World in Data, General Social Survey) plus a spreadsheet (Google Sheets or any free spreadsheet). Check: The two counts add up to the number of sanctions you saw, which can be fewer than 8.
6. Fill in the three-lens table for one norm from your log, then answer the analysis questions in Part 5 using only your own log and this week's definitions. Check: Each perspective has one sentence and its level of analysis.
7. Do the AI-critique step in Part 6, or the equivalent route printed there, and write the 3–5 sentence report. Check: Your report quotes at least two errors and corrects each with evidence.

Fallback route

When to use it: Use this route if you cannot spend 20 minutes observing a shared public space.

Complete the workshop with the illustrative library-and-café log below, constructed for this workshop and not from a real place, in place of your own observations. In the illustrative log, the observer saw these reactions: row 1, a quick thank-you; row 2, glares and a muttered comment; row 3, a staff member pointing to the posted quiet-room rule; row 4, a thank-you from the desk staff; row 6, a sharp shh from another student; rows 5, 7, and 8, no reaction seen. Sort all eight rows, tally them with the same spreadsheet formulas or by hand, fill in the three-lens table for one row, answer every analysis question about this log, do the critique step, and submit the same items for equal credit.

This route earns the same credit as the primary route.

This illustrative 20-minute log from a library lobby and café gives you eight norms to sort when you cannot observe a space yourself.

Fallback model data

Row	Setting and moment	The norm (the expected behavior)	Kept or broken?	Moral weight: folkway, mos, or taboo	Sanction seen (or none seen)	Positive or negative	Formal or informal
1	Library lobby, a person reaches the door first	Hold the door for the person behind you	Kept
2	Café counter line	Wait your turn in line	Broken: someone stepped in ahead
3	Reading room	Keep your phone silent	Broken: a phone rang
4	Lobby floor, a dropped glove	Turn in something you find	Kept: handed to the front desk
5	Café counter	Pay for what you take before leaving	Kept
6	Study tables	Keep voices low near people studying	Broken: loud talking
7	Study tables, a laptop left unattended	Leave other people's belongings alone	Kept
8	Café seating	Bus your own tray	Kept

Part 4 — The Scaffold

This is your observation log; each row records one norm you saw, so every later count rests on something you watched yourself.

Student scaffold table 1

Row	Setting and moment	The norm (the expected behavior)	Kept or broken?	Moral weight: folkway, mos, or taboo	Sanction seen (or none seen)	Positive or negative	Formal or informal
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

Tally your sort here so you can see which kinds of norms and sanctions your space runs on.

Student scaffold table 2

Quantity	Count	Share of my 8 norms (%)	Formula or steps used
Folkways
Mores
Taboos
Formal sanctions seen		Not needed
Informal sanctions seen		Not needed

Read one norm from your log through each perspective so you can see how each lens asks a different question at its own level.

Student scaffold table 3

Perspective	Level of analysis	One sentence about the norm I chose
Structural functionalism
Conflict theory
Symbolic interactionism

Part 5 — Analysis Questions

1. Report how many of your eight norms were folkways, mores, and taboos, give each as a share of your log, and show the formula or division you used. Then report how many of the sanctions you saw were formal and how many were informal.
2. Pick the norm you saw broken in the plainest way. Describe what happened and the sanction that followed, and sort it on both questions: its moral weight and its sanction's direction and formality. If any norm in your log had a written rule behind it, say whether that rule made it a mos, and why or why not.
3. Compare your results with your if… then… because… prediction. Did the kind of norm you logged most often match it? Give one reason, drawn from what the space is for, why that kind of norm would show up most often there.
4. Use your three-lens table: write one sentence about the norm you chose from each perspective, naming the level of analysis each works at. Then name one norm in your log that a visitor from another place might find strange, and say what a cultural relativist would ask about it before judging it.
5. Name two limits of your log, such as that 20 minutes in one place is a tiny slice of a culture, that your own culture shapes which behaviors you noticed as norms, or that many sanctions happen where an observer cannot see them, and say how each limit affects what you can conclude about the culture of the place.
6. Choose one and answer it in 3–4 sentences: (a) which norm in your log would you have broken without noticing if you were new to the space, and what would have told you that you had broken it? (b) did any of your first reactions to what you saw sound like ethnocentrism, and how would you rewrite one of them as a relativist?

Part 6 — AI-Critique Moment

Choose one equal-credit critique route. Route A: ask an approved AI tool to critique your completed work, then check its response against your own evidence. Route B is the no-AI equivalent printed below.

Approved tools: Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT, Grok, Microsoft Copilot.

Prompt to paste:

I've pasted my completed workshop tables above. For a different example, a student watched an illustrative campus food court for 20 minutes and logged eight norms: 6 were folkways, 2 were mores, and none was a taboo; of the sanctions the student saw, 7 were informal and 1 was formal. Please do five things. First, give the share of the eight norms that were folkways. Second, tell me who introduced the terms folkways and mores to sociology, and in what year. Third, tell me what this log shows about how people in this country behave in public. Fourth, the food court has a posted sign asking people to bus their trays; tell me whether the sign causes people to be polite there. Fifth, one person in the log cut into the line; tell me what the log says about that person's character. If you know of any study on how common line-cutting is, cite it.

Test the response for these likely failures:

• Chatbots often supply an exact figure for how common line-cutting is, or name a plausible-sounding study, with no source a student can open.
• Chatbots often credit folkways and mores to Durkheim or Weber, or attach the wrong year.
• Chatbots often turn one food court's log into a claim about how people in the whole country, or a whole group, behave in public.
• Chatbots often say the posted sign makes people polite because the sign and the polite behavior appear together.
• Chatbots often judge the line-cutter's character from the log, for example calling the person rude or dishonest by nature.

In 3–5 sentences, say what the chatbot got right, quote at least two sentences it got wrong, and correct each one with evidence from the example's numbers or this week's definitions.

Equivalent route (no AI required)

No AI account is required for this workshop. This route assesses the same objectives, Objective 3 (analyze culture and socialization — values, beliefs, norms, symbols, and language; ethnocentrism and cultural relativism; the agents of socialization; and the social development of the self in Cooley's and Mead's accounts) and Objective 1 (apply the sociological imagination — connecting personal troubles to public issues — and the three major theoretical perspectives (structural functionalism, conflict theory, symbolic interactionism) to interpret a social phenomenon, naming the level of analysis each works at and placing the discipline's founders with the ideas and works they are known for), takes comparable effort of about the same 90 minutes, uses the same rubric, and earns the same credit. Instead of the chatbot, critique this flawed analysis of the campus food-court example in Part 6, printed here in full: "Six of the eight norms were folkways, which is 60% of the log. Durkheim introduced the terms folkways and mores in 1912. A national study found that one in four people cut in line at least once a week. This log shows that people in this country care more about convenience than about rules. The posted tray sign makes people polite, since the polite behavior happened right under it. The person who cut the line must be a dishonest person." Mark every error you can find, quote at least two, and correct each one in 3–5 sentences with evidence from the example's numbers or this week's definitions. Submit the marked-up analysis and your correction in place of the chatbot report and share link.

Part 7 — What to Submit

• All three completed scaffold tables, or the completed fallback log with its tally and three-lens tables
• Your written if… then… because… prediction
• Written answers to all six analysis questions
• The chatbot critique report with its share link, or the equivalent route's marked-up flawed analysis

Deliverable:

A short Sociology in Action Workshop report on norms in one shared public space: your prediction, three completed tables (an eight-row observation log sorted by moral weight and sanction, a tally of folkways, mores, taboos, and formal and informal sanctions with shares, and a three-lens reading of one norm), written answers to six analysis questions, and a critique of a chatbot's answers about a similar log, or, on the equivalent route, a marked-up correction of the printed flawed analysis. Submit in any accessible file type or as a link; a recorded response may be submitted as audio or video with a transcript, or as text. Choose how you show it: written answers, a recorded explanation with a transcript, or a labelled diagram that sorts your eight norms with short notes; every form is graded by the same scoring criteria.

Rubric

The rubric below shows how each submitted part is evaluated; bands are full, partial, or none.

Workshop evaluation criteria

Criterion	Full	Partial	None
Observing and sorting the norms	Eight norms are logged from real observation or the fallback log, each is sorted as a folkway, mos, or taboo with a sensible reason, every sanction seen carries both a direction and a formality label, and a written rule is not treated as automatically making a norm a mos.	Most norms are logged and sorted, but some rows lack a label or a reason, a sanction is labelled on only one dimension, or a written rule is read as a mos.	No log is submitted, or the norms are invented rather than observed or taken from the fallback log.
Tallying the sort	Counts of folkways, mores, and taboos and of formal and informal sanctions match the log, each share is computed from the log with the formula or steps shown, and the shares add up to 100.	Most counts are right, but one count or share is missing or wrong, or the formula or steps are not shown.	No tally is reported, or the counts do not come from the log.
Three lenses and relativism	One norm is read through structural functionalism, conflict theory, and symbolic interactionism with each level of analysis named, and a norm that might look strange to a visitor is approached with a relativist's question rather than a verdict.	Two lenses are applied well, a level is missing, or the relativism answer judges the practice instead of asking about its meaning.	No three-lens reading or relativism answer is given.
Critique and correction	The chatbot critique report or the marked-up flawed analysis quotes at least two errors and corrects each with evidence from the example's numbers or this week's definitions; both routes earn this band equally.	The chatbot critique report or the marked-up flawed analysis names an error but corrects it without evidence, or corrects only one; both routes earn this band equally.	No chatbot critique report or marked-up flawed analysis is submitted, or the output is pasted without any check; both routes are scored the same way.
Limits and reflection	Two real limits of the log are named with their effect on what can be concluded, and the chosen reflection option is answered with a reason.	One limit is named, or a limit is named without its effect, or the reflection gives no reason.	No limit or reflection is given.

Quality Gate

• Every row in your log describes behavior you watched yourself, or comes from the printed fallback log, and names no one.
• Every norm has a moral-weight label, and every sanction you saw has both a direction and a formality label.
• Every count and share comes from your own formulas or hand tally of your own log, never from memory or a chatbot.
• Your three-lens sentences name each perspective's level of analysis.
• No statistic, study, or claim about a whole group or country is invented anywhere in the submission.
• The critique quotes the chatbot or the flawed analysis and corrects at least two errors with evidence.