Social Norms :: Sociology

Lately the concept of social norms, common rules of behaviors, has engaged the interest of a numerous philosophers, who are concerned with understanding the rational actors’ behavior. Kennedy and Brown addresses the concern from different aspects, they are mutually disturbed by the same social norm questions, specifically in the theory of human behavior development that is significant to the construction of legal institutions. In their endeavor to account for social norms they both argue that Human Rights pose challenges for politics. This is far from absolute, Human Rights in a way, present difficulties to politics but it is in fact social norms which pose the most critical problem for politics. At the same time social norms seem to decipher the complications of human rights; they construct a particular problem for politics because they appear to manipulate laws that govern social norms for their own personal use. Theorist challenge the thinking of these such norm compliances to explain a principle that people always act in their own self-interest, to maximize the greediness of their social power. Moreover, Human Rights in this situation are described at presents as a mutual exploited problem. Such as â€Å"institutional practice of human rights promotion propagates an unduly abstract idea about people, politics and society (Kennedy p111).† Because of these general expectations, politics can simply construct this space of lawlessness to circumvent and established social norm traditions. The avoiding of certain taboo like deploying nuclear weapons or tripping the waiters falls into this complicity that society follows. This brings up the rational choice of individualâ €™s actions. Which is why social norms would sanction governments or people for violating this paradigm of â€Å"language may well establish our legitimacy within a legal framework (Butler p25)† and the â€Å"particular vocabulary (Kennedy p111),† something we know occurs regularly in Human Rights language to be used to create this lawlessness that pose problems for politics. The eruption of criticism to politics that violation Human Rights language is rapidly eclipsed by potential threats of counsel to â€Å"problems of intellectual dishonesty (Brown p461)† which invokes norms instinctively to questions that transpires. In this context of challenging the expectations of rational political institution’s choice bring forth how social norm constrict and occasionally govern or deceive individuals. For example in the War on Terrorism and Guantanamo Bay, President Bush pushes for a preemptive strike as a legitimize sanction of Human Rights and social norms reactions for security.