Howard S. Becker

Howard S. Becker is an American sociologist best known for developing labeling theory in his 1963 book Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance, which argued that deviance is not an inherent quality of an act but the product of social rules and the application of labels by others, so that a person becomes deviant chiefly through the social process of being caught, defined, and treated as an outsider. Trained in the Chicago School tradition, Becker conducted early fieldwork on jazz musicians and marijuana users that grounded his theory in close observation of how deviant careers and subcultures actually form. He also wrote extensively on the sociology of art and occupations, notably in Art Worlds (1982), which examined artistic production as the outcome of cooperative networks of people rather than the achievement of isolated individual genius.