Conformity And Social Norms

It may not be easily noticed that people are, in every respects, regulated and restricted by social norms in day-to-day life. We seem to be able to do whatever we want, to have control of our life. Nonetheless, no matter how much freedom and autonomy people assume to have in their own life, what we think and what we do, in fact, are conformity and transgression to social codes (Williams and Bendelow, 1998). Furthermore, Elias’s analysis explains, from 13th to 18th centuries, how European’s behaviors and manners were ‘civilized’ to attune the demands of social existence and personal needs and inclinations (Elias,2012). Apart from the changing social norms in time sequence, Douglas (1970) put forward the idea of cultural comparison by illustrating

When doing a grocery shopping, the labels like organic, low-GI and gluten- free seem to be kind of doing good to our body and we just cannot help ourselves putting them into baskets. In social media, the promotions of various kinds of diet plans, such as Mediterranean diet, Intermittent Fasting, Juice Cleanse, often attract people’s attention. This tendency of people indulged in losing weight and keeping fit may not be something new in western society, though it becomes much more emphasized today. In China, a typical Asian society, as I noticed, the idea of keeping fit just begins to mean something important in people’s daily life. While in western society, where obesity seems to be a much more serious and urgent issue that needs to be tackled (Monaghan, 2007). In China, the idea of keep-fit just becomes familiar to the public in a recent decade. According to the Report on by General Administration of Sport of China, the number of fitness clubs in 2015 increased by 20%. Through the feedback from professional fitness trainers, nowadays, clients are requiring more professional guidance from trainers to achieve desirable body shape instead of simply pursing ‘slim’ or ‘skinny’ (RDFTC,

In 20th century western world, the epidemic of obesity, as a representation of ‘irrationality in rationality’, seems to be an obvious side effect of McDonaldization which emphasizes efficiency, calculability, predictability and obviating human judgment (Ritzer, 2004). In order to address the sequent problem of overweight, slimming clubs appeared to fight against obesity in a ‘scientific’ way, highlighting calculability and efficiency (Monaghan, 2007). On the contrary, in nearly the same period, China, was suffering from a severe famine, in which citizen’s food was sold on ration and strictly controlled by state. The mortality rate caused by malnutrition and hunger was too high to image (Dikötter,