A Typology of Norms

ALMOST fifty years have passed since Professor Sumner1 proposed his famous classification of norms into folkways and mores. Since that time there have been few efforts to elaborate or criticize this basic classification, even though there has been tremendous increase in interest in the empirical investigation of norms during this period. Sorokin vigorously attacked Sumner's typology, calling it a kind of grocery basket into which are dumped together [all sorts of norms] I2 and has replaced it with his classification of law-norms, technical norms, norms of etiquette and fashion, and final category of norms of something else, 3 in which the grocery basket is still evident. Linton has contributed the well-known categories: universals, specialties, and alternatives.4 Most recently, Robin Williams has revised and elaborated Sorokin's classification in his proposal of technical, conventional, aesthetic, and moral norms, and has further suggested classification in terms of the major dimensions of norms, together with sketch of the characteristics of type called institutional 5 The typology of norms presented here, while based in part upon these prior efforts, attempts classification employing additional dimensions (or criteria), directed toward the establishment of the salience of particular norms in any given hierarchical, normative system. It should be pointed out at once that the rather considerable literature 6 on the classification of values is relevant to the problem of typing norms; nevertheless, there is difference between values and norms, which precludes the direct application of value classifications to the study of norms. To make very brief distinction between values and norms, it may be said, following Kluckhohn,7 that values are individual, or commonly shared conceptions of the desirable, i.e. what I and/or others feel we justifiably want-what it is felt proper to want. On the other hand, norms are generally accepted, sanctioned prescriptions for, or prohibitions against, others' behavior, belief, or feeling, i.e. what others ought to do, believe, feel-or else. can be held by single individual; norms cannot. Norms must be shared prescriptions and apply to others, by definition. have only subject-the believer-while norms have both subjects and objects-those who set the prescription, and those to whom it applies. Norms always include sanctions; values never do. Although it is true that commonly held values often result in the formation of norms that insure the maintenance of the values, this is not always the case. Nor does it follow that every norm, at the point of its application, involves presently held value, even though most norms are based upon established values. As Turner has pointed out,8 there may be widely-held value placed upon baseball skills in society, but no norm which states that baseball ought to be played by the individuals in that society, or they will suffer the consequences. On the other hand, there may be norm that recommends stopping 1 William Graham Sumner, Folkways, Boston: Ginn & Co., 1906. 2 Pitirim A. Sorokin, Society, Culture, and Personality, New York: Harper and Brothers, 1947, p. 87. 3Ibid., p. 85. 4 Ralph A. Linton, The Study of Man, New York: Appleton-Century, 1936, Ch. 16. 5 Robin M. Williams, American Society, New York: Knopf, 1951, Ch. 3. 6 Cf. the bibliographic footnotes in Clyde Kluckhohn and others, Values and Value-Orientations in the Theory of Action in Talcott Parsons and Edward A. Shils (editors), Toward General Theory of Action, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1951, pp. 388-433. 7 Ibid., pp. 395-396. 8 Ralph H. Turner, Value Conflict in Social Disorganization, Sociology and Social Research, 38 (May-June, 1954), pp. 301-308.