Summary on Conformity, Defiance, and Crime

In the book Essentials of Sociology in the 6th chapter tells us what conformity, defiance, and crime are, among other things of that nature. Conformity is falling in line with what the given rules and normal behavior society accepts. Defiance is exactly the opposite, its defined by the book as “nonconformity to a given set of norms that are accepted.” So doing anything most people in that culture wouldn’t see normal. It’s a very broad subject. Anything from wearing a long sleeve shirt in the middle of the summer to a murder can be seen as deviant behavior. Edwin Lemert told us that he viewed the first act of deviance as primary deviance; this is the one act that gives the individual the label as a deviant. Then there was secondary deviance in which the individual accepts the label of deviant and starts to relapse committing these deviant acts, the acts progressively getting worse. Sometimes groups do these deviant acts together, this is called a deviant subculture. These form when there is a group of people whom all have the same values and practices, just something’s they do are seen as deviant. If that’s not clear an example of this would be the Heavens’ Gates Cult, who believed the world was doomed and the only way to survive was to commit suicide and have your soul saved by a UFO. Most people reading this would find that very odd and not normal to believe, well that makes then deviants and since they’re a group it’s a deviant subculture.
In this chapter you see the words “ social norms” a lot or just “norms”, these are very easily normal things a person does like say “bless you” after someone sneezes. So what happens when someone goes outside these norms and lets say breaks the “code of conduct”. So what happens when someone does this? Well in things like religion and groups like that there are these things called