Howard S. Becker

Howard Saul Becker (1928) is an American sociologist who has made major contributions to the sociology of deviance, sociology of art, and sociology of music. Before becoming a sociologist, Becker was a photographer and a piano jazz player.

Works

Books (selection)

• with Blanche Geer, Everett C. Hughes and Anselm Strauss, Boys in White: Student Culture in Medical School, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961; 1977; 1992.

• Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance, New York: The Free Press, 1963.
  • Outsiders. Etudes de sociologie de la déviance, Paris: Métalié, 1985 [1]. (French)
  • Outsiders: estudos de sociologia do desvio, trans. Maria Luiza X. de A. Borges, Rio de Janeiro: Zahar, 2009. (Brazilian Portuguese)
  • Außenseiter. Zur Soziologie abweichenden Verhaltens, trans. Cori A. Mackrodt and Stefanie Loyal, Wiesbaden: Springer Fachmedien, 2014; 3rd ed., 2019. (German)
  • Hariciler - Outsiders: Bir Sapkınlık Sosyolojisi Çalışması, Heretik Yayınları, 2015, 249 pp. (Turkish)
  • Outsiders. Studi di sociologia della devianza, Meltemi, 2017, 240 pp. (Italian)

• Art Worlds, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982, 1984; 25th anniv. ed., upd. & exp., 2008.
  • Los mundos del arte: sociología del trabajo artístico, trans. Joaquin Ibarburu, Bernal: Universidad National de Quilmes, 2008. (Spanish)
  • Sanat Dünyaları, trans. Evren Yilmaz, Istanbul: Ayrıntı Yayınları, 2013, 445 pp. (Turkish)

• Writing for Social Scientists: How to Start and Finish Your Thesis, Book, or Article, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986; 2nd ed., 2007.

• with Michal M. McCall (ed.), Symbolic Interaction and Cultural Studies, University of Chicago Press, 1990.

• with Robert R. Faulkner, Do You Know...? The Jazz Repertoire in Action, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009.

Articles (selection)

• "Notes on the Concept of Commitment", The American Journal of Sociology 66:1 (1960), pp 32-40. (French)
• "Photography and Sociology", Studies in the Anthropology of Visual Communication 1 (1974), pp 3-26.
• "Art Photography in America", Journal of Communication 25 (Winter 1975), pp 74-84.
• "Photographic strategies", Society 14:2 (1977), pp 85-87.
• "Visual sociology, documentary photography, and photojournalism: It's (almost) all a matter of context", Visual Studies 10:1 (1995), pp 5-14.
• "Categories and Comparisons: How We Find Meaning in Photographs", Visual Anthropology 14:2 (1998), pp 3-10.

Literature

• Alain Pessin, The Sociology of Howard S. Becker: Theory with a Wide Horizon, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017.

• Dagmar Danko, Zur Aktualität von Howard S. Becker: Einleitung in sein Werk, VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2015, 191 pp. (German)

• Jean Peneff, Howard S. Becker: Sociology and Music in the Chicago School, Routledge, 2018.

Links

• Website
• Wikipedia