OUTSIDERS: STUDIES IN
THE SOCIOLOGY OF
DEVIANCE
Howard S. Becker
(New York: Free Press, 1963)
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Symbolic interactionism
• Symbolic interactionism is a micro-level theory
based on the idea that people act in
accordance with shared meanings, orientations,
and assumptions
• Focus is on etiology (vs epidemiology), the
process by which a person becomes deviant
• e.g., labeling theory
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Labeling theory
• Labeling theory assumes that public
labeling, or branding, as deviant, has
adverse consequences for further social
participation and self-image
• the most important drastic change is in
public identity, which is a crucial step
towards building a long-term “deviant career”
“CAREER DEVIANCE”
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Master status
• master status is a status that assumes priority,
overrides other status considerations
• “…possession of one deviant trait may have a
generalized symbolic value, so that people
automatically assume that its bearer possesses
other undesirable traits allegedly associated with
it” (199) – i.e., auxiliary traits
• Becker gives example of race – Still the case? Or are
we in a “post-racial” society?
• Or do we need to look at the intersection of race and
socioeconomic status?
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…deviance a self-fulfilling prophecy
• If the master status is deviant, deviant identification
becomes the controlling one
•  self-fulfilling prophecy
• due to being excluded from participation in most other conventional
groups
• due to the “treatment,” which may itself produce increasing deviance
“BECOMING A
MARIHUANA USER”
Why do people engage in a deviant
activity such as using marihuana?
• Conventional explanations are psychological, based on
psychological traits that predispose one to deviant
behavior, i.e.,
• deviant motivations  deviant behavior
• Becker argues that instead of the deviant motives leading
to the deviant behavior, it is the other way around: the
deviant behavior in time produces the deviant motivation
Psychological explanations are not
sufficient to account for marihuana use
Theories based on the existence of some predisposing
psychological trait have difficulty in accounting for the many
users who do not exhibit the trait or traits which are
considered to cause the behavior
2) Psychological theories have difficulty in accounting for the
great variability over time of a given individual's behavior with
the drug
1)
• The same person will at one time be unable to use the drug for
pleasure, at a later stage be able and willing to do so, and still later
again be unable to use it in this way
• These changes, difficult to explain from a theory based on the user's
needs for "escape," are understandable as consequences of changes
in his conception of the drug
•
Learning the Technique
• The first step to becoming a user is learning to use the
proper smoking technique so that use of the drug will
produce effects in terms of which one’s conception of it
can change
• Only when this was learned was it possible for a
conception of the drug as an object which could be used
for pleasure to emerge
Learning to Perceive the Effects
• Being high consists of two elements:
1) the presence of symptoms caused by marihuana use
2) the recognition of these symptoms and their
connection by the user with his use of the drug
• In this way marihuana acquires meaning for the user as
an object which can be used for pleasure
Learning to Enjoy the Effects
• Marihuana-produced sensations are not automatically or
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necessarily pleasurable
The taste for such experience is a socially acquired one,
not different in kind from acquired tastes for oysters or dry
martinis
What was once frightening and distasteful becomes, after
a taste for it is built up, pleasant, desired, and sought after
Enjoyment is introduced by the favorable definition of the
experience that one acquires from others
Without this, use will not continue, for marihuana will not
be for the user an object he can use for pleasure.
Becoming a “marihuana user” requires
learning:
1) learning to smoke the drug in a way which will produce
real effects
2) learning to recognize the effects and connect them with
drug use (learning to “get high”)
3) learning to enjoy the sensations s/he perceives
 Suggests deviance is often learned, and not
something innate