Sociology Standing Still for Ten Term Paper

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Social norms are occasionally explicit or even codified into law: we are not supposed to walk around naked; talk to ourselves; or show up an hour late to a meeting. When we break any one of the explicit social norms we pay, either by being criticized, ostracized, or penalized. Breaking a subtle social norm by standing around doing nothing is more difficult to target. No one can point a finger and say, "You shouldn't be doing that," even though some people might think I look funny.

The concept of the sociological imagination as well as Cooley's "looking glass self" illustrate how identity and self-image are sociological constructs. When standing around doing nothing, I felt like an outsider because I was not participating in the normative behavior of the crowd around me. Being alone is in itself not a problem but without at least appearing to have a purpose in standing around, I was isolating myself from others.

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When I found myself feeling hostile I realized that I had been using the sociological imagination in perceiving myself as deviant. Reflected in myself, for example, I saw curiosity. Sometimes other people made faces. I could detect concern or consternation from I became the looking glass self when doing this exercise because of how easy it was to notice strong emotional reactions from relatively meaningless behaviors.

On the other hand, many people seemed not to notice me at all. When they didn't I felt truly invisible, as if I was not reflected at all in my own looking glass. Because I was violating a key social norm by skulking around, I was an invisible person in the sociological imagination. I found myself wanting to shout out, "This is a school assignment! I'm not really this weird!" Amazingly, doing nothing made a strong impact on my self-image, bringing up feelings of social isolation and alienation......

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"Sociology Standing Still For Ten" (2006, October 10) Retrieved June 4, 2026, from
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