Normative

Joycey

Could someone please explain how to use the word normative?

I understand that it deals with moral rights and wrongs, good and bad and stuff like that. But can I also use it in terms of any value attributing whatsoever?

Like not just moral good/bad, but good/bad in the sense of flavour or smell or suitability for a purpose or whatever. Suitability for a purpose is actually the specific question I want to know the answer to so if ye could tell me that itd be great. Cant find a clear enough answer in online dictionaries or wikipedia...

Joe1919

One interesting defination I came across lately was that norms were 'informal social regularities that individuals feel obligated to follow because of an internalized sense of duty, because of a fear of external non-legal sanctions, or both'.

The guy who wrote this is a lawyer and has a detailed paper on same.
www.rasmusen.org/published/Rasmusen-07-handbook.norms.pdf

extrinzic

My understanding is use of the word to describe what is widely accepted. Normative ethics is an investigation into whether or not we are justified in our widely accepted beliefs about what is right or wrong. Descriptive ethics would stand in contrast to this, and empirically examine what is the percentage of people who believe something is right or wrong. The word normative is also used outside philosophy, and google puts this quite well:

• [FONT=&quot]normative /n'[/FONT][FONT=&quot]ɔ[/FONT]ː[FONT=&quot]ʳ[/FONT]m[FONT=&quot]ə[/FONT][FONT=&quot]t[/FONT][FONT=&quot]ɪ[/FONT][FONT=&quot]v/ [/FONT]
  • [FONT=&quot]Normative[/FONT][FONT=&quot] means creating or stating particular rules of behaviour. ADJ usu ADJ n formal [/FONT]
    • [FONT=&quot]Normative sexual behaviour in our society remains heterosexual. [/FONT]
    • [FONT=&quot]...a normative model of teaching. [/FONT]

Joycey

Ok so from what both of ye are saying normativity only enters into the equation in a social context, it is about social, moral norms or values, and nothing to do with the value which we attribute to everything in our environment in a non-social setting.

Fair enough, il have to find a different word to go in the sentence

extrinzic

I'm not sure, but I guess it would be safer to use a different word.

Cannibal Ox

Judith Butler talks about "normative violence". She argues that the norms of society are an extension of juridical power, which discursively produce and repress subjects. Subjects are discursively produced, or repressed, and failing to fit in to the "heterosexual matrix" (a/the site of normativity) pushes them outside society. Normativity in Butler's work is violent, repressive and productive. But it's also the site for resistance, through parody, and where subjects can discover agency within discursive practices. So, for someone like Butler normativity is an extension of power. It isn't a site of morality or ethics but a site of the production and repression of subjects.

Joe1919

Cannibal Ox wrote: »

Judith Butler talks about "normative violence". She argues that the norms of society are an extension of juridical power, which discursively produce and repress subjects. ............

Indeed, wife beating was possibly a 'norm' at one time and was legal, supposedly once the stick used was no thicker than a thumb.(rule of thumb?)
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/rule-of-thumb.html

Cannibal Ox

Joe1919 wrote: »

Indeed, wife beating was possibly a 'norm' at one time and was legal...

You'd think that'd be what Butler means. But not really. In terms of Normative Violence, Butler would probably not consider wife beating an act of normative violence. Butler is looking at how discourse constructs subjects. The very idea of wife is what Butler might be challenging in that situation, what are the discursive practices in place that construct wife, and from where do they come from? In understanding how "wife" is produced, we might be able to trace the lines in the construction of wife, and where those lines are produced that justify the beating of women (I'm not saying that women play a part in being beaten, I'm saying that in the construction of "woman" as subject, the act of beating is part of the construction of the subject...finding a way out of that construction of woman means finding and discovering the possibility of agency within discourse to realign the subjectivity of woman within the dominant discourse).

I think. Butler is extremely obtuse. I may be wrong. Interpretations may vary :pac:

Joycey

Cannibal Ox wrote: »

(I'm not saying that women play a part in being beaten

You need Sartre for that
/bad taste