Julia Sayler Sociology 101006 Professor Megan Cortez 7 March 2016
Weirding the Normal: A Colorado State- Pueblo Football Game The Caplow article is about Rule Enforcement without Visible Means: Christmas Gift Giving in Middletown. This article talks about how people in the town of Middletown would give gifts. The town had gift giving for Christmas set up in many different ways. Some ways the town would do it were “Participants in this gift system should give (individually or jointly) at least one Christmas gift every year to their mothers, fathers, sons, daughters; to the current spouses of these persons; and to their own spouses” (Caplow 1315). The article also talks about Christmas The abnormal behaviors for the game were when the fans would be sitting there texting on their phone, talking about something other than football, and even getting up and leaving before the game was done. Some of the general unacceptable trends to do at this activity are texting during the game, and causing fights with other fans or spectators. Other unacceptable behaviors by adults are verbal and physical abuse towards the refs and others at the game. Being a student at the game during this time, I played the role differently by acting disinterested, the students started turning around and asking me to get up and cheer. The socially constructed meaning that contributed to this interaction was that when the students I was with noticed me sitting there acting bored, I felt like they were getting annoyed that I was not participating how they thought I should. The book’s definition of social control is “a group’s formal and informal means of enforcing its norms” (Henslin 160). The social control mechanisms that happened throughout the game were that the red shirts (freshman football players) and the other students that were cheering would start to yell at the students who were more worried about where the parties were that night rather than who was going to win the game. The cost of doing this wrong, in the opinion of those who
