On the Identification and Analysis of Social Norms and the Heuristic Relevance of Deviant Behaviour

Abstract

The chapter shows that a conceptual and phenomenologically grounded approach to social norms provides useful insights into the question of whether normativity is an exclusively human phenomenon. Social norms are to be distinguished from social rules like conventions, customs, moral norms, and institutional norms. The exact character of social norms is revealed most clearly in cases of transgression, i.e. by considering social reactions to persons disobeying or violating what is requested on a normative level. In these contexts, it also becomes clear that one becomes explicitly aware of pre-existing social norms through sanctions against norm-deviant behaviour. Since sanctions need not be verbal, they make it possible to consider cases of social normativity also in the area of animal behaviour. In its analysis of norm-deviant behaviour, the chapter integrates both holistic and individualistic methodologies.