Sociology concepts and applications

Sociology

Standing still for ten minutes and doing nothing is difficult enough to do alone. However, in public to stand alone and do absolutely nothing seems freakish, odd, or even deviant. I felt awkward performing the exercise, guilty as if I were breaking a bylaw. Many people ignored me entirely as if I were a street lamp. Others seemed to stare at me occasionally with curiosity or concern and a sense of embarrassment never left me throughout the entire exercise. I stood as still and stony as possible near a bus stop on a city street. Clearly I was not waiting for a bus and I did not flinch when one approached; I never looked at my watch and did not look around or make eye contact with others because I did not want it to appear I was waiting for a friend.

Toward the end of the ten-minute segment I began to feel more hostile toward those who looked at me, and wanted to say, "What are you looking at? Mind your own business." When I did feel indignancy more than embarrassment, I stopped to wonder why it should be odd to simply do nothing and which social norms I was violating. Nothing can be immoral about doing nothing because there are no consequences from idle behavior.

In our culture, doing nothing can be categorized as deviant. When a person meditates, he or she is still doing something, even though the individual is entirely still. Similarly, sitting on a bench watching a sunset, or laying out on a beach share many of the behavioral characteristics in common with my behavior on the street. However, none of those "activities" can be considered deviant. Standing around doing absolutely nothing, on the other hand, seems suspicious to people: we are skulking as if waiting for trouble to happen.

Performing this exercise has a distinct benefit for the student of sociology. 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.

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 others. 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.