Howard S. Becker

Howard S. Becker (born April 18, 1928, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.—died August 16, 2023, San Francisco, California) was an American sociologist known for his studies of occupations, education, deviance, and art.

Becker studied sociology at the University of Chicago (Ph.D., 1951) and taught for most of his career at Northwestern University (1965–91). His early research applied a definition of culture as “the shared understandings that people use to coordinate their activities” to dance musicians, marijuana users, and students. Becker’s most famous book, Outsiders (1963), viewed deviance as the cultural product of interactions between people whose occupations involved either committing crimes or catching criminals. It represented a major turning point in the sociology of deviance. In Art Worlds (1982), a book that greatly influenced the sociology of art, Becker examined the cultural contexts (the “art worlds”) in which artists produce their work.

Becker balanced his theoretical contributions with practical works on methods of social research. He developed aspects of a sociology of writing in Writing for Social Scientists (1986), phrasing his points in the context of practical advice on how to write about sociological research. Those concepts were broadened in Tricks of the Trade (1998), which discussed effective and meaningful research methods in the social sciences. Becker’s later books included What About Mozart? What About Murder? (2013) and Evidence (2017).