As a fairly passive person, I knew that I wanted to get out of my comfort zone and do something I would not normally do; my roommate and I went to Target on a Saturday morning, before it got too crowded, and I decided to intrude on employees and other shopper’s personal space. I went up to the first employee, a young man in his late teens/20s, and asked him where the notebooks were, while standing maybe a half of a foot away from him, making complete eye contact. Immediately he started to back up and was a bit flustered before telling me where to look. According to my roommate who was watching from a distance, he also somewhat raised his hands from his sides, like he was ready to push me away. Another employee, an older woman, took a few steps
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This ties into the idea of social order which “only exists as a product of human activity”. In our society, it is expected to stand a few feet away from someone when interacting; closing the gap suddenly is construed as far too intimate. However, the social order is very different in other cultures. For example, in many Latin American countries, the perception of personal space is much smaller; they have no qualms about speaking closely or showing affection in greeting. All of the people I interacted with clearly were used to the social order of American culture in which distance is expected during social exchanges. My deviance activity is further intertwined with the social construction of reality and its three components: externalization, objectivation, and internalization. After someone or something decided that personal space was important to recognize and not to enter someone else’s, that idea began to be reproduced through interaction and habitualization. Following that externalization, that idea is objectivated and socially reproduced becoming legitimized. People teach their children that it is rude to get too close to others, and to respect personal boundaries. This is why everyone I interacted with thought I was being rude or weird. Internalization was a large facet of my actions because the whole time I broke people’s social bubbles, I was constantly judging and second guessing myself. The concept of personal space has been instilled in me, and to go against it felt like I was doing something very
This ties into the idea of social order which “only exists as a product of human activity”. In our society, it is expected to stand a few feet away from someone when interacting; closing the gap suddenly is construed as far too intimate. However, the social order is very different in other cultures. For example, in many Latin American countries, the perception of personal space is much smaller; they have no qualms about speaking closely or showing affection in greeting. All of the people I interacted with clearly were used to the social order of American culture in which distance is expected during social exchanges. My deviance activity is further intertwined with the social construction of reality and its three components: externalization, objectivation, and internalization. After someone or something decided that personal space was important to recognize and not to enter someone else’s, that idea began to be reproduced through interaction and habitualization. Following that externalization, that idea is objectivated and socially reproduced becoming legitimized. People teach their children that it is rude to get too close to others, and to respect personal boundaries. This is why everyone I interacted with thought I was being rude or weird. Internalization was a large facet of my actions because the whole time I broke people’s social bubbles, I was constantly judging and second guessing myself. The concept of personal space has been instilled in me, and to go against it felt like I was doing something very