“OUTSIDERS; STUDIES IN THE SOCIOLOGY OF DEVIANCE ) Howard S. Becker THE FREE PRESS A Dinition of Macmillan Publizbing Coy In. Collier Mecmallan Publishers‘CONTENTS Reactions to the Conflict Isolation and Self-Segregation 6 CAREERS IN A DEVIANT OCCUPATIONAL GROUP: The Dance Musician Cliques and Success Parents and Wives 7 RULES AND THEIR ENFORCEMENT Stages of Enforcement An Illustrative Case: The Maribuana Tax Act & MORAL ENTREPRENEURS Rule Creators The Fate of Moral Crusades Rule Enforcers Deviance and Enterprise: A Suommary 9 THE STUDY OF DEVIANCE: Problems and Sympathies 10 LABELLING THEORY RECONSIDERED Deviance as Collective Action Demystifying Deviance Moral Problems Conclusion Inpex a1 95 101 103 14 121 129 135 147 147 152 155 162 165 177 181 189 194 206 213 1 Outsiders Aux social groups make rules and at- tempt, at some times and under some circumstances, to enforce them, Social rules define situations and the kinds of behavior appropriate to them, specifying some actions as “ight” and forbidding others as “wrong.” When a rule is enforced, the person who is supposed to have broken it may be seen as @ special kind of person, one who cannot be trusted to live by the rales agreed on by the group. He is regarded as an out- sider. ‘But the person who is thus labeled an outsider may have a different view of the matter. He may not accept the rule by which he is being judged and may not regard those who judge‘OUTSIDERS him as either competent or legitimately entitled to do so. Hence, a second meaning of the term emerges: the rule breaker may feel his judges are outsiders, In what follows, I will try to clarify the situation and process pointed to by this double-barrelled term: the situations of rule-breaking and rule-enforcement and the processes by Which some people come to break rules and others to enforce them. Some preliminary distinctions are in order. Rules may be of a great many kinds. They may be formally enacted into Jaw, and in this case the police power of the state may be used in enforcing them. In other cases, they represent informal agreements, newly arrived at or encrusted with the sanction of age and tradition; rules of this kind are enforced by in- formal sanctions of various kinds. Similarly, whether a rule has the force of law or tradition or is simply the result of consensus, it may be the task of some specialized body, such as ie police or the committee on ethics of a professional association, co enforce it; enforcement, on the other hand, may be everyone's job or, at least, the job of everyone in the group to which the rule is meant to apply. Many rules are nor enforced and are not, in any except the most formal sense, the kind of rules with which I am con- cerned. Blue laws, which remain on the statute books though they have not been enforced for a hundred years, are examples. (It is important to remember, however, that an unenforced law may be reactivated for various reasons and regain all its original force, as recently occurred with respect to the laws governing the opening of commercial establishments on Sun- day in Missouri.) Informal rules may similarly die from lack of enforcement. I shall mainly be concerned with what we can call the actual operating rules of groups, those kepr alive through attempts at enforcement. 2 Outsiders Finally, just how far “outside” one is, in either of the senses Thave | varies from case to case. We think of the person who commits a traffic violation or gets litde too drunk at a party as being, after all, not very different from the rest ‘of us and treat his infraction tolerantly. We regard the thief as less like us and punish him severely. Crimes such as murder, rape, or treason lead us to view the violator as a true outsider. Tn the same way, some rule-breakers do not think they have been unjustly judged. The traffic violator usually subscribes to the very rules he has broken. Alcoholics are often ambiv- alent, sometimes feeling that those who judge them do not ‘understand them and at other times agreeing that compulsive drinking is a bad thing. Ar the extreme, some deviants (homo- sexuals and drug addicts are good examples) develop full- blown ideologies explaining why they are right and why those who disapprove of and punish them are wrong. Definitions of Deviance ‘The outsider—the deviant from group rules—has been the subject of much speculation, theorizing, and scientific study. What laymen want to know about deviants is: why do they do it? How can we account for their rule-breaking? What is there about them that Jeads them to do forbidden things? Scientific research has tried to find answers to these (questions. In doing so it has accepted the common-sense premise that there is something inherently deviant (qoalits tively distinct) about acts that break (or scem to break) social rales. It has also accepted the common-sense assumption that the deviant act occurs because some characteristic of the per son who commits it makes it necessary or inevitable that he should, Scientists do not ordinarily question the label “deviant! 3oursivers when it is applied to particular acts or people but rather take it as given. In so doing, they accept the values of the group making the judgment. Ieis easily observable that different groups judge different things to be deviant. This should alere us to the possibility that the person making the judgment of deviance, the process by which char judgment is arrived at, and the situation in which itis made may all be intimately involved in the phenom- enon of deviance. To the degree that the common-sense view of deviance and the scientific theoties that begin with it Premises assume hat acts that break rules are inherently de. vient and thus take for granted the sicuations and processes of judgment, they may leave out an important variable. If Sclentiss ignore the variable character of the process of judg- ment, they may by that omission limit the kinds of theories that can be developed and the kind of understanding that can be achieved.’ Our first Problem, then, is to construct a definition of de- viance. Before doing this, let us consider some of the defini- tons scientists now use, seeing: what is left out if we take them 2S point of departure for the study of outsiders. The simplest view of deviance is essentially statistical, defining as deviant anything that varies too widely from the average-When a statistician analyzes the results of an agricul tural experiment, he describes the stalk of corn that i ox, ceptionally tall and the stalk that is exceptionally short as deviations from the mean or average, Similatly, one can de- scribe anything that differs from what is most common isa deviation. In this view, to be left-handed or redheaded ig deviant, because most people are right-handed and brunette, So stated, the statistical view seems simple-minded, even G,Ck Donald R. Cresey, “Criminologial Research aid the Defakion OF Crimes” Americon Journal of Sociolesy, LVI (May, ISU sho Ge 4 Outsiders trivial. Yeti simplifies the problem by doing away with many questions of value that ordinarily arise in discussions of the nature of deviance, In assessing any particular case, all one need do is calculate the distance of the behavior involved from the average. But it is too simple a solution, Hunting with such a definition, we return with a mixed bag—people who are excessively fat or thin, murderers, redheads, Homes, and trafic violators, The mixture contains some ordinarily thought of as deviants and others who have broken’ no rale at all. The statistical definition of deviance, in short, is too far removed from the concer with rule-breaking which rompts scientific study of outsiders, : Pref simple ve sch more somnon view of devine identifies it as something essentially pathological, revealing the presence of a “disease.” This view rests, obviously, ais medical analogy. The human organism, when it is wor ing efficiently and experiencing no discomfort, is said to be “healthy.” When it does not work efficiently, a ce is present. The organ or function that has become deranged is said to be pathological. Of course, there is little disagreement about what constitutes a healthy state of the onganisn. = re is agreement when one uses the notion petolgy slog to deere Lnds of Ber tat are regarded as deviant. For people do not agree on what, con- stitutes healthy behavior. It is dificult to find a definition that will satisfy even such 2 select and limited group as psychiatrists; it is impossible to find one that people generally accept as iéy-accept criteria of health for the organism. “ ‘Sometines people snean the analogy more strictly, begase they think of deviancé as the product of mental disease. "The ; oe he dns ia C. Weigh Mil “The Poona esogy socal Vahcogsas denizen [oatul of Socio, RE. epee, Sn. :