Every day citizens of America are bombarded by signs and symbols that tell them how function within their society. Information swirls around them, from billboards to street signs to commercials on TV. Yet the signs which are seemingly regarded as the most important symbols are those associated with so-called “rules of the road”. Americans must conform to traffic rules and regulations in order to keep themselves and those around them safe. But are these rules inherent or imposed upon citizens by the social current of the time? This paper will examine some of these regulations, including traffic lights, crosswalks, and sidewalks, and how their presence is culturally reveling relevant to America. One safety directive that Americans follow …show more content…
is traffic lights, which extend their regulations not only over cars, but also over pedestrian movements. All moving parts on a road must adhere to the every-changing lights that keep them in alignment with acceptable behaviors. American culture, and furthermore American law, dictates that individuals must follow these traffic directives in order to remain within the laws put in place by society: “If I attempt to violate the rules of law they react against me” (Durkheim 51). Not following these rules would be dangerous on American roads, and ignoring these laws could lead to fines or even collisions. But how is this known? No man can intuitively understand traffic lights from the moment he is born. No, this learned behavior, a construct of society, becomes engrained in a man who learns the rules in order to be accepted into society. In addition to the customary following of traffic lights, pedestrians also must cling to sidewalks. Pedestrians must attach themselves to their cement havens or risk life-threatening danger. Yet this is also a learned action, an action “invested with a coercive power by virtue of which [it] exercise[s] control of [the individual]” (Durkheim 52). As with the following of traffic lights, the individual is not born with the knowledge that sidewalks entail safety. One must learn how to accept the “necessity” of sidewalks in order to find a place in a society that collectively values them. The individual learns the need for safety, and begins to associate sidewalks with safety, thus he adheres to the learned idea of walking on sidewalks. Where the sidewalk ends and pavement begins, two rows of white lines appear on the asphalt: the crosswalk. Some do ignore these marks occasionally, but the majority of citizens heed this symbol as a way to maintain decorum. The act of painting two simple white lines on pavement with about three feet in between funnels the flow of pedestrians into one collected area, enabling people to walk across unafraid. From one’s first journeys on foot in the outside world, one is taught that he must stay within the confines of those two white lines, that it is imperative to remain in that unpainted limbo in order to remain safe from the passing cars. But this is not necessarily of his own choosing. One could argue that it is society that imposes this ideal upon him. He would not know to stay within the lines if he had not been told. But because it is within societal interests for him to stay within the lines, he quickly begins to perform this action by himself, and soon will pass it on to others in his society. He sees the necessity of safety in social function and therefore becomes a member of the collective, unconscious acceptance. These social constructs of safety—traffic lights, sidewalks, and crosswalk—say a great deal about our culture, namely the heavily conformist attitudes that saturate Americans’ daily lives.
The fact that Americans conform to these external ideas makes them social facts. A social fact, according to Émile Durkheim, is “any way of acting, whether fixed or not, capable of exerting over the individual an external constraint” (Durkheim 59). An American would most likely say that they continue to follow these laws and customs because it enhances public safety. But this need for public safety has transformed Americans into a nation of conformists. Conformists who believe that their way is the correct way, and that their laws and customs must be abided in order to maintain a functioning social system. Therefore, America’s strict adherence to these constructs, and others like them, results in an ethnocentric ideology. This means that Americans believe, to a point, that “[their] beliefs and behaviors are right and true” (Robbins 8). Americans rely so heavily on their infrastructure that they cannot comprehend a society functioning without one of their own infrastructures and public safety laws. It becomes difficult for Americans to accept other cultures when they have less infrastructure, less roads and sidewalks and crosswalks. Ethnocentrism is rampant among western societies who believe that uniform infrastructure and conformity to invented rules equates an established society, and America is no different. These public safety regulations force their followers into a conformist, ethnocentric society, including traffic lights, crosswalks, and sidewalks, and how their presence is culturally relevant to
America.
The street code is a very important concept when talking about the world of the inner city. In Anderson’s words, the code of the
Only the poor, the beggar, and the under-classes are prefer to walk, in the opinion of some Americans. However, one American, the author Antonia Malchik, writes “The End of Walking,” and she argues that in Orwellian fashion, American people not only walk less, but are afforded less opportunity to walk. Undermined pedestrian transit systems encroaches on people’s liberty, instinct, and health. In Malchik’s article, most of the rhetorical strategies are very effective. She strengthens the credibility successfully by citing experts’ words and narrating her own experiences. With facts and statistics, she interprets the logical reasons of walking.
This model’s theorists argue that abnormal behavior is best understood in light of the social and cultural forces that influence an individual; as such they address the norms of and people’s roles in society. When Kody was a young boy, society’s cultural forces that had the biggest impact on his life were gangs. Gangs were all around him and because they were all around him, gangs became a normal part of life as they were a big part of south central Las Angeles’s culture. Culture refers to the set of values, attitudes, beliefs, history, and behaviors shared by a group of people and communicated from one generation to the next. There is no doubt in my mind after reading this book and what I have heard about south central Las Angeles that there is a lack of normal values that the majority of the United States shares.
The sidewalk is a social structure for the people who work and live in it. They are mentors for each other. They play the same role of self-direction and psychological fulfillment of a formal job or family for example; where the society is shrunken on that one sidewalk. They form an informal social organization and social control so they can survive against the outer social system; meanwhile, this social organization organizes property rights and division of labor. Although their life seems deviant, they still practice conventional social practices and norms. Although it might seem that these men are engaged in random behavior, yet there is an organized interaction of norms and goals, and a shared collective self-consciousness from having a shared common history.
As previously stated, nations often base themselves and thusly their common laws off the chosen philosophy of the country. For instance, in the United States of America, police officers carry guns. In Great Britain, however, officers are banned from carrying extremely harmful weapons such as firearms and instead carry the classic truncheon. To the average citizen of each of these countries, the policy that their law enforcement adheres to makes perfect and logical sense, while the opposite country’s policy seems to be either dangerous and overly violent or as overly merciful. However, the reason as to why these two sibling nations differ so greatly comes down to one simple thing: the gun policy imposed on American officers are different from those used in Britain because of conflicting common philosophic beliefs found in both of the countries, where America takes on a naturalistic, believing that humans are inherently evil, viewpoint and Britain sports a rather rationalistic, where in which hum...
Have you ever wondered what it feels like to live in a country or city that is completely discriminative about your ethnicity? How would you feel to be walking down the road and be afraid to cross the street because there is a different race in the direction you are wanting to head? Well these are prime examples that happen in everyday life all the time. The movie Crash that I will be referencing a lot of my information off of, is a movie where there is a lot of different ethnical backgrounds. In the beginning of the movie Crash, a detective is investigating a homicide, a black male was found dead on the side of the road. The movie starts off with a lot of vehicles driving down the road with a lot of tire marking engraved into the grass.
American political culture emphasizes the values of liberty, equality, and democracy. Most of America’s debating is not over whether these issues are important, but how to best go about achieving these ideas. American’s define liberty as freedom, but America believes that liberty should be contained on some levels so they can create a stable society. The definition of freedom is that we can do whatever we want, as long as we do not affect another person’s freedom. American’s want to be able to do what they want, while not affecting someone else. So some rules are set to protect people and create a stable society.
The importance of public space and life is an important aspect of any given society. Without such spaces, society will continue to be dived among class lines. When a certain group of people hold power and it’s all about power and control, there will always be those that are excluded and denied access to the public sphere. As long as imaginary and irrational fears are instilled into the private lives of the public, society will continue to build fortress around its buildings and to use surveillance cameras outside the doors. Public space is a right to all citizens and due to fear of the unknown; it is diminishing right before our eyes. In this day and age, to be an American means to always be under the watchful eye of another.
To understand American society fully, one must understand America’s political makeup. In order to do that, it is necessary to understand a person’s political opinions and how they came about. This is done by examining how political ideology and political socialization influence society and individuals within that society. Political ideology is the set of beliefs that shape the way someone views government action; it is the way that they think the government should act and react to certain situations. In the United States, the two main political ideologies are liberal and conservative. How American’s teach the tenets and goals of the political system is known as political socialization. This is typically done through parents, peers, school,
society, there is not only a tolerance of certain kinds of non-conformity, but sometimes uniqueness and individuality are celebrated. For example, in the last presidential election both Bernie Sander and Donald Trump were campaigning “against” the establishment. They were nonconformist candidates whose campaigns gained supporters based almost entirely on the fact that their ideas went against the “mainstream” candidate moderates in their political parties. Also, in the U.S. today, the government doesn’t enforce conformity. In fact, the Supreme Court has made some decisions in recent years on issues like gay marriage that have upheld the right to be a nonconformist. However, although the government doesn’t enforce conformity, there are many ways that individuals encourage others to conform. For example, in schools and other institutions, individuals who “don’t fit in” are often harassed and bullied for being different. People who look different, dress different, or act different, face a lot of hostility. Also, it is common for individuals with differing opinions, particularly, on political issues to shout each other down. Social media is a platform where often people with unpopular ideas or opinions get bullied into being quiet and keeping their opinion to themselves. Therefore, even though, we seemingly live in a society that is tolerant of nonconformity, there are pressures to conform and be like everyone
In Borat’s case, the theory would state that “We need to agree that a red light means stop for it to have meaning and impact. If not, misunderstandings occur” (Woyzbun, 2016). Evidently, Borat fails to understand the semiotics of basic traffic symbols and signals while driving in America because driving in Kazakhstan is not regulated by traffic signs. Instead, people are meant to drive in respect to each other and avoid collisions; drivers regulate themselves. Therefore, Borat applies Kazakhstan’s semiotics of driving to American streets and wreaks havoc by disregarding common traffic
(Tyler & Fagan, 2008). Legitimacy, therefore, reflects an important social value, distinct from self-interest, to which social authorities can appeal to gain public deference and cooperation. Previous research has implied that when authorities are viewed as legitimate, they [authorities] are better able to motivate people to comply with the law. In addition to motiving people to comply with the law, it also promotes the public’s cooperation with the police, willingness to collaborate with the police, help seeking behavior and crime reporting practices in the USA (Fagan & Tyler, 2004, 2005; Lind & Tyler, 1988; Murphy, Hinds, & Flemming, 2008; Reisig, Bratton, & Gertz, 2008). Enhancing legitimacy also advances the goals of policing, which includes crime control effectiveness (Skogan & Frydl, 2004). As Kochel and colleagues (2013) point out understanding how voluntary cooperation and compliance can be promoted is essential to effective policing in a democratic environment (pp. 896). Previous research has also suggested that in societies such as the United States of America, where laws and cultural norms protect liberty and privacy, legal authorities rely on the public’s cooperation and acquiescence (Tyler et al,
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) defines aggressive driving as "the operation of a motor vehicle in a manner that endangers or is likely to endanger persons or property"—a traffic and not a criminal offense like road rage. Examples include speeding or driving too fast for conditions, improper lane changing, tailgating and improper passing. Approximately 6,800,000 crashes occur in the United States each year; a substantial number are estimated to be caused by aggressive driving. 1997 statistics compiled by NHTSA and the American Automobile Association show that almost 13,000 people have been injured or killed since 1990 in crashes caused by aggressive driving. According to a NHTSA survey, more than 60 percent of drivers consider unsafe driving by others, including speeding, a major personal threat to themselves and their families. About 30 percent of respondents said they felt their safety was threatened in the last month, while 67 percent felt this threat during the last year. Weaving, tailgating, distracted drivers, and unsafe lane changes were some of the unsafe behaviors identified. Aggressive drivers are more likely to drink and drive or drive unbelted. Aggressive driving can easily escalate into an incident of road rage. Motorists in all 50 states have killed or injured other motorists for seemingly trivial reasons. Motorists should keep their cool in traffic, be patient and courteous to other drivers, and correct unsafe driving habits that are likely to endanger, antagonize or provoke other motorists. More than half of those surveyed by NHTSA admitted to driving aggressively on occasion. Only 14 percent felt it was "extremely dangerous" to drive 10 miles per hour over the speed limit. 62 percent of those who frequently drive in an unsafe and illegal manner said police for traffic reasons had not stopped them in the past year. The majority of those in the NHTSA survey (52 percent) said it was "very important" to do something about speeding. Ninety-eight percent of respondents thought it "important" that something be done to reduce speeding and unsafe driving. Those surveyed ranked the following countermeasures, in order, as most likely to reduce aggressive and unsafe driving behaviors: (1) more police assigned to traffic control, (2) more frequent ticketing of traffic violations, (3) higher fines, and (4) i...
Willer, R., Kuwabara, K., & Macy, M. W. (2009). The false enforcement of unpopular norms. American Journal of Sociology, 115(2), 451-490. doi: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/journals/journal/ajs.html
Rules are the foundation of society. If there are no rules everyone would do whatever they want and have serious consequences. For example, texting and and using your cell phone while driving is very dangerous to yourself and other people surrounding you. The reason why many people are against this action is because it causes many car accidents and deaths every year. While driving many teenagers and adu...