Ethnomethodolgical exercise to break background assumption (this cannot be against the law or harm anybody)
• ****You must carry out an activity and then report other people’s reactions to the “violation.”****
• For example, you can have a pizza delivered to you in class and see what happens (must be enough to share!), walk into a movie theater wearing deep-sea diving flippers instead f shoes; bring a Taco Bell meal into McDonalds then sit down and start eating. Be as creative as possible!
• While conducting the exercise, you should not only note other people’s reactions to this breaking of the background assumptions, but also your own feelings of comfort or discomfort in “violating” the unwritten rules of social life.
• As part of your journal entry you should critically convey what the reactions and feeling say about the deeply embedded, common understanding that lie at the root of social life.