Encyclopedia > Howard S. Becker
Howard Saul Becker was born in Chicago, Illinois on April 18, 1928. As a undergraduate and later graduate student at the University of Chicago, he worked as a professional jazz pianist. The professor Everett C. Hughes, whose primary interest was the sociology of work and professions, was an important influence on Becker. It was Hughes, Becker reports, who first encouraged him to undertake the study of jazz musicians as a professional group. This research led Becker to write extensively about drug use, and he put off publishing it for over a decade until 1963, when the political climate in the United States had improved. The resulting book, "Outsiders" was a critical work in the sociology of deviance and the foundation of labeling theory. For his doctoral dissertation, Becker studied Chicago schoolteachers. Generally speaking, his work reflects the prevailing thematic and theoretical preoccupations of Chicago sociology at that time, with its attention to symbolic interactions involving race, status, and power in the urban meltingpot. Erving Goffman was a contemporary of Becker's at Chicago, and their research interests and writing styles both reflect a similar formative milieu. Nickname: The Windy City Motto: Urbs In Horto (Latin: City in a Garden), I Will Official website: http://egov. ... April 18 is the 108th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (109th in leap years). ... 1928 (MCMXXVIII) was a leap year starting on Sunday (link will take you to calendar). ... The University of Chicago is a private university principally located in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois, founded in 1890 and opened in 1892. ... The sociology of deviance is the sociological study of deviant behavior, the recognized violation of cultural norms, and the creation and enforcement of those norms. ... Labeling Theory is a sociological approach to explaining how criminal behavior is perpetuated by the police and other labelers. The theory hypothesizes that the labels applied to individuals influence their behavior, particularly that the application of negative labels (such as criminal or felon) promote deviant behavior. ... Erving Goffman (June 11, 1922 – November 19, 1982), was a Jewish Canadian sociologist and writer. ...


Becker received his Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Chicago in 1951, and went on to teach in Sociology Departments at Northwestern University, the University of Washington, and the University of California at Santa Barbara. However, the majority of his research, writing and teaching was in other fields of sociology, including but not limited to the sociology of art, qualitative method, visual sociology and the practice of research and writing (composition theory) in social sciences. The University of Chicago is a private university principally located in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois, founded in 1890 and opened in 1892. ... Northwestern University is a private, coeducational, non-sectarian university, located in Evanston, Illinois and Chicago, Illinois. ... The University of Washington, founded in 1861, is a major public research university in Seattle, Washington. ... The University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) is a coeducational public university located in Santa Barbara County, California. ... Social interactions of people and their consequences are the subject of sociology studies. ... Sociology of art is one of the subfields of sociology. ... The qualitative method in sociology is a research method. ... Visual sociology is an area of sociology concerned with the visual dimensions of social life. ... The social sciences are a group of academic disciplines that study the human aspects of the world. ...


He is known for the clarity of his prose, and is a staunch advocate of what has been termed the "Plain style" of writing (see, for example, The Elements of Style). His stylistic predilections betray his academic pedigree: at the time he was a student, sociologists at the University of Chicago embraced European positivism and Midwestern pragmatism. They sought to communicate their ideas with scientific precision, on the one hand, while making them accessible to politicians and planners, on the other. Becker's book Writing for Social Scientists: How to Start and Finish Your Thesis, Book, or Article is considered to be one of the best books advising all academics how to write, and reflects the conviction that clear prose and clear thinking are inseparable. The Elements of Style (the little book – 1918) is an American English writing style guide detailing eight elementary rules of usage, ten elementary principles of composition, a few matters of form and a list of words or expressions described by its prescriptivist authors as being commonly misused. ...