Outsider. On the sociology of deviant behavior

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Outsider. On the sociology of deviant behavior (Original: Outsiders. Studies in the Sociology of Deviance ) is the best known and most influential book by Howard S. Becker . With this book, Becker shifted the social science perspective in the analysis of deviance . The focus is not on the deviating action or the deviating person, but rather the definition of the action and the acting person as deviating by others. The subject of investigation is thus the social reaction. The study is still considered a paradigmatic contribution to the labeling approach .

The book was included in the canon of the “main works of sociology”, is a classic in the sociology of crime , a key work in critical criminology and, with the two chapters on marijuana consumption, it is a pioneering work in social science addiction research .

content

Outsider was not planned as a monograph from the outset. The preliminary remark shows that various chapters appeared in social science journals between 1951 and 1955. Chapters 3 and 4 on marijuana use were taken from the 1949 Masters thesis that Becker had written at the University of Chicago with Everett C. Hughes and William Lloyd Warner .

The subsequent considerations on labeling theory are based on a lecture from 1971 in which Becker dealt with the criticism of his considerations. Since the American edition, they have been an integral part of the book as Chapter 10. Since the first German translation was published in the same year, German-speaking readers have been familiar with this retrospective of the text from the start.

Basic thesis

In the first chapter Becker cursively cites conventional explanations of deviant behavior and then presents his much-cited basic thesis: “The person with deviant behavior is a person to whom this designation has been successfully applied; Deviant behavior is behavior that people refer to as such. ”Dagmar Danko points out that the sentence in the English original is more concise and contains the decisive term from which the labeling approach was subsequently derived:“ The deviant is one to whom that label has successfully been applied; deviant behavior is behavior that people so label. "

Deviating behavior is accordingly the product of a transaction between a social group and an individual considered by that group as a rule violator. Such a transaction does not take place automatically: Just because someone has committed a rule violation does not mean that others will react as if it had happened. And vice versa: Even if someone has not broken a rule, they may be treated as if they had done it. The attribution depends not only on the rule, but also on the reputation of the rule-breaking person. In connection with juvenile delinquency, violations of the law by boys from middle-class neighborhoods are less vigorously prosecuted and sanctioned than those by boys from slum neighborhoods. And crimes committed by corporations are almost always prosecuted as civil cases, while the same crime committed by an individual usually becomes a criminal matter. In summary, Becker writes: "Deviation is not a quality that lies in the behavior itself, but in the interaction between a person who commits an action and those who react to it."

Different careers

In the second chapter, Becker does not ask, as was previously the case in criminology and social science, “why” deviant behavior arose. He asks about the "how" and in his answer develops a step model for which he coined the term "deviating career". Deviant behavior is then, like any action, part of an ongoing interaction. With this point of view, Becker falls back on the term “career” as used by his academic teacher Everett C. Hughes in his studies of professional and work sociology . Becker clarifies the idea of ​​deviance careers in the chapters on marijuana use.

Marijuana Use and Social Control

In the third and fourth chapters, Becker describes the individual stages of the process in which one becomes a marijuana user on the basis of 50 qualitative interviews. First of all, it is necessary to learn the technique that will get you "high". First, that means acquiring the technique of using marijuana through imitation. Then you have to learn to perceive the effect and enjoy it in a next step. According to Becker, the mere presence of symptoms that are caused by consumption does not mean that the consumer defines his condition as “being high” and perceives it as positive. It is not automatically enjoyable to feel dizzy, to be thirsty, to have a tickling scalp and to miscalculate time and distance. A reinterpretation of the situation that typically occurs in interaction with experienced consumers is required. To be “high” is a question of social definition.

The career as a marijuana user goes on step by step, even the first one is not easy, because initially, under the conditions of the ban, you have to get into the situation and have the opportunity to smoke marijuana at all. This is only possible through others who have access to the substance. The stage model does not inevitably mean that anyone can get out of the process at any time and end their deviant career. The different identity is not inherent in the person concerned, even if it can be included in their self-image. This is especially the case when a “culture of the deviant group” develops that encourages and supports the individual in sticking to specific behavior, even if (if discovered and labeled as deviant) negative sanctions threaten or follow.

Live musicians as a different group

In the fifth and sixth chapters, Becker describes the culture of a deviant group using the example of live musicians (“dance musicians”, ie musicians who play to dances), using the term subculture from Albert K. Cohen's study “Delinquent boys. The Culture of the Gang ”takes over. Live musicians, to whom Becker himself belonged as a piano player for years, did not have a secure and accepted existence in the first post-war decades compared to orchestra or radio musicians and also had to play in less respectable places. Such live musicians are an example that deviant behavior does not always have to be something that violates the law. Becker writes: "Although their activities formally comply with the law, their culture and way of life are so strange and unconventional that they are branded as outsiders by the more conventionally bound members of the community."

Becker describes the culture of these live musicians as a kind of solution to their precarious existence, they form a network of cliques that organize the allocation of performances and are thus mutually committed. Hierarchies are formed in the cliques and in the overall group (who has good contacts? Who has patrons? To whom are there obligations?)

The live musicians make it clear that they incorporate their attribution as outsiders into their self-image to such an extent that they separate and isolate themselves from more conventional people. In their understanding, the non-musicians are the outsiders who are given the label “ philistines ”.

Rule enforcement and rule setters ("moral entrepreneurs")

In the seventh and eighth chapters, Becker takes a look at the other side of the labeling process. For those who work to ensure that a desired of them usually becomes law, it introduces the concept of moral entrepreneurs one ( "moral entrepreneur"). Based on Joseph R. Gusfield's term "symbolic crusade", which he also coined in 1963 in a study of the American abstinence movement, he describes the campaigns of moral entrepreneurs as "moral crusades" ).

If the campaign of the moral entrepreneurs was successful and there was a new rule or a new law, the enforcers (employees of the police and judiciary) face a difficult task, because they have to control and enforce compliance with the rule, regardless of whether or not they Believe the new rule is correct and share the moral zeal of the rule-makers.

To study deviant behavior

In the ninth (and originally final) chapter, Becker complains about the lack of studies on delinquency and the methodological deficits of the studies at hand. It is based more on court records than on direct observation: Above all, there are not enough investigations in which the person who led them had such close contact with those he investigated "that he was aware of the complex and varied nature of the deviant activity could have become aware. "

Such studies could give the impression that the researcher agrees with the assessments of the examined and presents a one-sided and distorted picture of reality. Becker corrects this: "What we are presenting is not a distorted picture of 'reality', but reality, which preoccupies the people we have studied, the reality that they create through their interpretations of their experiences and according to which they act. "

Three years after the book's publication, Becker dedicated his opening speech as President of the Society for the Study of Social Problems at a conference in Miami in 1966 : "Whose Side Are We On?"

Subsequent considerations on the "labeling theory"

In the tenth chapter, which has been part of the book since the 1973 edition, Becker deals with criticism of his writing and also uses the statements from his lecture "Whose Side Are We On?"

One table that Becker presented at the beginning of the second chapter was particularly criticized:

Types of deviant behavior
compliant behavior breaking behavior
designated as different falsely accused pure deviation
not designated as deviating compliant secret deviation

Given the labeling approach, the distinction between compliant and non-compliant behavior seemed illogical to many readers. They particularly struck against the designation “secret deviation”, because there could not be such a thing if an action was only deviant (in the sense of the central message of the book) when it was designated as such. Becker reacted to this in the subsequent considerations by introducing the term "potentially deviating" and recalled what it was basically about: "With my own formulations at the time, I wanted to emphasize the logical independence of actions and the judgments made about them."

reception

Outsider appeared in at least 26 editions, at least 11 publishers and in at least nine languages. It was included in the canon of "Major Works in Sociology". and had an important influence on social science research on addiction .

The presentation of divergent careers and Becker's theoretical conclusions from them was recognized by David Matza , an early exponent of critical criminology , as an overdue heresy of the sociology of deviance. This is contradicted by Jan Werheim, who cites other representatives of critical criminology such as Wolfgang Keckeisen and Helge Peters . Becker's typology of deviating behavior does not imply a break with the criminal aetiology that had prevailed until then . It presupposes an objective yardstick by which behavior beyond judgment is measured. That is incompatible with the assumption of the labeling approach . Despite and because of such vagueness, the book provokes fruitful controversies in the sociology of crime even today .

The book is still currently inspiring empirical research. Alice Goffman refers in her ethnographic study “On the Run. The criminalization of the poor in America "(2014) expressly on Becker, especially where she describes how it comes to subordinate crimes:" If a wanted person settles his disputes out of fear of the police, then this act of violence is a follow-up crime - a another crime that the person only commits because they have been labeled a criminal. "

Howard S. Becker himself turned away from the subject soon after the book's publication and the subsequent considerations in the second edition and emphasized: “I'm not a criminologist (...) and have not worked in this field for a very long time. "

Expenses (selection)

  • Outsiders. Studies in the Sociology of Deviance . The Free Press, New York 1963.
  • Outsiders. Studies in the Sociology of Deviance . With additional chapter at end, The Free Press, New York 1973.
  • Outsiders. Studies in the Sociology of Deviance . Free Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc., New York 2018, ISBN 978-1-982-10622-5 .
    • Outsider. On the sociology of deviant behavior . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1973, ISBN 3-10-874301-5 .
    • Outsider. On the sociology of deviant behavior . Fischer-Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main 1981, ISBN 3-596-26624-6 .
    • Outsider. On the sociology of deviant behavior . 2nd edition, Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2014, ISBN 978-3-658-01253-3 .
    • Outsiders, études de sociologie de la déviance . AT THE. Métaillé, Paris 1995, ISBN 2-86424-042-4 .

literature

  • Christina Schlepper / Jan Wehrheim (ed.): Key works of critical criminology. Beltz Juventa, Weinheim 2017, ISBN 978-3-7799-3484-4 , pp. 68–79.
  • Dagmar Danko: On the topicality of Howard S. Becker. Introduction to his work. VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2011, ISBN 978-3-531-17420-4 , pp. 63–82.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Source of the information are Howard S. Becker: Outsiders. On the sociology of deviant behavior , 2nd edition, Wiesbaden. Springer VS, 2014, ISBN 978-3-658-01253-3 ; and Dagmar Danko: On the topicality of Howard S. Becker. Introduction to his work . VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2011, ISBN 978-3-531-17420-4 , pp. 63–82. Only verbatim quotations, page references for the chapters covered and other sources are shown separately.
  2. ^ Howard S. Becker: Outsiders. On the sociology of deviant behavior , 2nd edition, Wiesbaden. Springer VS, 2014, pp. 25–38.
  3. ^ Howard S. Becker: Outsiders. On the sociology of deviant behavior , 2nd edition, Wiesbaden. Springer VS, 2014, p. 31.
  4. ↑ Dagmar Danko: On the topicality of Howard S. Becker. Introduction to his work . VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2011, p. 65.
  5. ^ Howard S. Becker: Outsiders. On the sociology of deviant behavior , 2nd edition, Wiesbaden. Springer VS, 2014, p. 36.
  6. ^ Howard S. Becker: Outsiders. On the sociology of deviant behavior , 2nd edition, Wiesbaden. Springer VS, 2014, pp. 39–55.
  7. ^ Howard S. Becker: Outsiders. On the sociology of deviant behavior , 2nd edition, Wiesbaden. Springer VS, 2014, pp. 57-88.
  8. ^ Howard S. Becker: Outsiders. On the sociology of deviant behavior , 2nd edition, Wiesbaden. Springer VS, 2014, pp. 89–121.
  9. ^ Albert K. Cohen : Delinquent boys.The culture of the gang . Free Press, Glencoe (Illinois) 1955; German translation: Criminal youth. On the sociology of youth gangs , Reinbek near Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1961.
  10. ^ Howard S. Becker: Outsiders. On the sociology of deviant behavior , 2nd edition, Wiesbaden. Springer VS, 2014, p. 89.
  11. ^ Howard S. Becker: Outsiders. On the sociology of deviant behavior , 2nd edition, Wiesbaden. Springer VS, 2014, pp. 123–157.
  12. ^ Joseph R. Gusfield : Symbolic crusade. Status politics and the American temperance movement . 2nd edition, University of Illinois Press, Urbana 1986, ISBN 0252013212 (first edition 1963).
  13. ^ Howard S. Becker: Outsiders. On the sociology of deviant behavior , 2nd edition, Wiesbaden. Springer VS, 2014, pp. 159–167.
  14. ^ Howard S. Becker: Outsiders. On the sociology of deviant behavior , 2nd edition, Wiesbaden. Springer VS, 2014, p. 161.
  15. ^ Howard S. Becker: Outsiders. On the sociology of deviant behavior , 2nd edition, Wiesbaden. Springer VS, 2014, p. 161.
  16. ^ Howard S. Becker, Whose Side Are We On? In: Social Problems 14, 1967. pp. 239-247; German translation by Aldo Legnaro , "Whose side are we on?" In: Aldo Legnaro and Daniela Klimke (eds.), Kriminologische Grundlagentexte , Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2016, ISBN 978-3-658-06503-4 , pp. 7– 22nd
  17. ^ Howard S. Becker: Outsiders. On the sociology of deviant behavior , 2nd edition, Wiesbaden. Springer VS, 2014, pp. 169–195.
  18. ^ Howard S. Becker: Outsiders. On the sociology of deviant behavior , 2nd edition, Wiesbaden. Springer VS, 2014, p. 39.
  19. ^ Howard S. Becker: Outsiders. On the sociology of deviant behavior , 2nd edition, Wiesbaden. Springer VS, 2014, p. 176.
  20. ^ Jan Wehrheim, outsider. On the sociology of deviant behavior . In: ders. And Christina Schlepper (eds.), Schlüsselwerke der Kritischen Kriminologie , Weinheim: Beltz Juventa, 2017, ISBN 978-3-7799-3484-4 , pp. 68–79, here p. 68.
  21. ↑ Christoph Maeder: Howard S. Becker. Outsiders. In: Dirk Kaesler , Ludgera Vogt (Hrsg.): Major works of sociology (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 396). Kröner, Stuttgart 2000, ISBN 3-520-39601-7 , pp. 29-33.
  22. ↑ Burkhard Kastenbutt, Sociology of Addiction and its History . In: Robert Feustel , Henning Schmidt-Semisch , Ulrich Bröckling (eds.) Handbook drugs from a social and cultural science perspective . Springer Fachmedien, Wiesbaden 2019, ISBN 978-3-658-22137-9 , pp. 119–130, here p. 123.
  23. ↑ David Matza: Deviant behavior. Studies on the genesis of deviant identity , Quelle & Meyer, Heidelberg 1973, ISBN 3-494-00779-9 , p. 117.
  24. ^ Jan Wehrheim, outsider. On the sociology of deviant behavior . In: ders. And Christina Schlepper (eds.), Key Works of Critical Criminology , Weinheim: Beltz Juventa, 2017, pp. 68–79, here pp. 74 f.
  25. ^ Jan Wehrheim, outsider. On the sociology of deviant behavior . In: ders. And Christina Schlepper (eds.), Schlüsselwerke der Kritischen Kriminologie , Weinheim: Beltz Juventa, 2017, pp. 68–79, here p. 78.
  26. ↑ Alice Goffmann: On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City . University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Illinois, USA 2014, ISBN 978-0-226-13671-4 ; German: On the Run. The criminalization of the poor in America . Antje Kunstmann Verlag, Munich 2015, ISBN 978-3-95614-045-7 . P. 356.
  27. ↑ Quoted from Jan Wehrheim, outsider. On the sociology of deviant behavior . In: ders. And Christina Schlepper (eds.), Schlüsselwerke der Kritischen Kriminologie , Weinheim: Beltz Juventa, 2017, pp. 68–79, here p. 68.