Norms and Values

Ideal and practical norms

A distinction MU has set directly, and it is worth its own heading.

An ideal norm is the standard a society professes: what its members say ought to be done and would defend if challenged. A practical, real or operative norm is the standard actually observed in daily conduct.

The gap between them is normal and is not hypocrisy. Every society professes standards it does not fully keep, and the gap is data rather than scandal: it tells a researcher which norms are held as aspirations and which as working rules. Truthfulness in all dealings is an ideal norm in most societies; the practical norm permits the courtesies and evasions of ordinary life. Punctuality, non-discrimination in employment, and the prohibition of dowry are further instances where the professed and the observed standards differ measurably.

Why a lawyer should notice it. A statute enacts an ideal norm. Whether it is obeyed depends on the practical norm already in the field, and the size of the gap between the two predicts the cost of enforcement, which is the argument of [Law and Social Change]. It is also the source of a standing research problem: a survey asking what people think ought to be done measures the ideal norm, and only observation or record measures the practical one, which is why [Observation] insists that behaviour and reports of behaviour are different data.

Characteristics of norms

1. They are social, held by a group rather than an individual.
2. They are prescriptive: they state what ought to be, not what is.
3. They are relative to time, place and group. Nothing is a norm everywhere.
4. They are learned, through socialisation.
5. They carry sanctions, positive as well as negative: praise and standing as much as punishment.
6. They are mostly internalised, and this is the important one. Most people obey most norms without any external enforcement, because they have made the norm their own and would feel shame in breaking it. A society in which norms were obeyed only from fear of sanction could not be policed.
7. They vary in force, from the trivial to the absolute.
8. They change, and Module III is about how.

The functions of norms

They make behaviour predictable, which is the precondition of all cooperation. They provide order without constant supervision. They integrate the group by giving it a common standard. They control conduct, and they define the group, since to accept its norms is part of belonging to it.

Values

What they are

A value is a general and enduring conception of what is desirable. It is not attached to a particular situation, which is what distinguishes it from a norm. Honesty, equality, respect for elders, hospitality, patriotism, individual liberty, purity, family loyalty.

Characteristics

1. General and abstract, applying across situations.
2. Enduring, and slower to change than norms.
3. Shared, though never by everyone in a large society.
4. Hierarchically arranged: societies and persons rank their values, and the ranking matters more than the list, because the interesting cases are conflicts.
5. Emotionally charged, and defended when challenged.
6. The ground of norms: they supply the reason a norm is thought right.

How values and norms relate

The relation is one of justification. A value is why; a norm is what. The value of respect for life justifies norms against killing, against dangerous driving and against negligence in a hospital, and legal rules in each field. One value generates many norms; one norm may serve several values.

Value conflict is what makes hard cases. Liberty against security, individual autonomy against community integrity, equality against the recognition of difference. A society does not resolve these once; it settles them repeatedly and differently in different fields, and a great deal of constitutional adjudication is exactly that settlement.

Norms and values compared

Law among the norms

This is the section a law student should be able to reproduce in an examination.

Three propositions follow, and each is examinable.

Most law begins as a more. Prohibitions on killing and theft were moral norms long before they were enacted. Legislation ratifies and specifies what a society already believes.

Not all law corresponds to a more, and that is where enforcement becomes expensive. Traffic rules, registration requirements and tax provisions are largely norms without moral weight, obeyed from prudence rather than conviction, so obedience varies with the chance of being caught in a way that obedience to the prohibition on killing does not.

Law can move ahead of mores deliberately. A statute may forbid what much of the society still approves, as with untouchability, dowry or child marriage. This is the whole question of [Law and Social Change], and the sociological answer is that such a law can work but is slow, expensive and dependent on other forces changing the mores alongside it.

A worked example

A Mumbai road at eight in the morning.

Letting an elderly person cross first is a folkway. Nobody is punished for failing; it produces a look.

Not driving away after knocking someone down is a more. The condemnation is severe and immediate, and it does not depend on whether anyone reports the matter.

Stopping at a red light is a law. It is written, specific, and enforced by an agency with power to fine.

The chapter's point is in the comparison. Compliance with the third depends heavily on whether a camera or a constable is present, while compliance with the second does not, because the second is internalised and the third mostly is not. A rule supported only by sanction is expensive to enforce; a rule supported by a more enforces itself. That is the practical reason a legislator should care about sociology.

What this does NOT mean

Norms are not always followed, and the gap between the norm and actual behaviour is one of the standard subjects of research.

Values are not always practised. A society may hold equality as a value and practise discrimination. The gap is real data, not hypocrisy to be dismissed.

Norms are not always good. Norms sustaining untouchability or the seclusion of women are norms in exactly the same sense as norms of hospitality. The concept is descriptive.

Law is not the highest norm sociologically. It is the most formal, not the most powerful. In most people's lives, on most days, the mores of their group govern far more conduct than the statute book does.

Quick revision

1. Norm: a rule about how one ought to behave in a situation, carrying sanctions. Value: a general, enduring conception of what is desirable.
2. Sumner's classification: folkways, mores, taboo, and law; fashions and rituals are usually added.
3. Folkways: mild disapproval. Mores: strong moral condemnation. Taboo: absolute prohibition. Law: enacted, written, state-enforced.
4. Norms are social, prescriptive, relative, learned, sanctioned, internalised, variable in force, and changing.
5. A value is why, a norm is what. One value generates many norms.
6. Value conflict is what produces hard cases and much constitutional adjudication.
7. Most law begins as a more; law lacking moral support is expensive to enforce; law can be pushed ahead of mores, slowly and at a cost.

Test yourself

1. Define norms and values and state the relation between them. A norm is an accepted standard of behaviour prescribing what members of a group ought to do in a given situation and carrying sanctions for breach. A value is a general and enduring conception of what is good, right and desirable. The relation is one of justification: the value supplies the reason the norm is thought right, so a value is why and a norm is what, and one value generates many norms.

2. Distinguish folkways from mores, with examples. Folkways are ordinary customs whose breach produces mild disapproval and the judgment that a person is odd or ill-mannered, such as forms of greeting or dress at a wedding. Mores are norms regarded as essential to the group's welfare and carrying strong moral significance, such as prohibitions on incest or on killing, whose breach produces severe condemnation and which are felt by those who hold them as self-evident rather than as custom.

3. Where does law fit among the norms? Law is a norm distinguished by being deliberately enacted, written and specific, and enforced by the organised power of the state through specialised agencies. It differs from folkways and mores in its source, its form, its definiteness and its capacity to change immediately by legislation, and it is the most formal but not the most powerful regulator of everyday conduct.

4. Why is a law that does not correspond to a more expensive to enforce? Because obedience to such a rule is not internalised. People obey it from prudence rather than conviction, so compliance varies with the perceived chance of detection and requires continuous supervision. A rule that rests on a more is enforced by the person's own conscience and by the reaction of everyone around them, and therefore costs the state almost nothing.

5. Give an example of value conflict and its legal consequence. Liberty against security, or individual autonomy against the integrity of a community. Because a society ranks values differently in different fields and at different times, such conflicts are not settled once; they are resolved repeatedly and inconsistently, which is why a great deal of constitutional litigation consists of choosing between two values each of which the society genuinely holds.