Social practices are a set of practical guidelines and generally accepted rules of behaviour in society or in certain sectors and affecting numerous aspects of our lives. Among the social uses is common to distinguish between normative and non normative. These practices consist of majority but which it has binding, regulatory, mandatory, and without, therefore, the behaviour departs from that practice social cause adverse reactions, that is, without the group put pressure on who act differently. The normative social practices or social customs in the strict sense, are characterised by obligatory or take some social articulator and because the social group exerts pressure for compliance, determining their social failure adverse reaction can range from mere social disapproval to the exclusion of the group.
In this sense social policy applications have two important similarities with the law: its social obligation and provided with external constraint. The difference, however, the institutionalisation of the penalty. Indeed, in the field of law there are certain organs specifically created for that purpose by the legal system and have special responsibility for the application of sanctions or enforce them effectively, while the enactment of social norms is not institutionalised. Social sanctions have a diffuse, informal, disorganised. Same face of ambiguity and vagueness of the social norms, the law is characterised by greater certainty, based precisely on legal certainty.