Howard Saul Becker (April 18, 1928 – August 16, 2023) was an American sociologist who taught at Northwestern University.

[3] Becker and his colleagues, including Erving Goffman and Anselm Strauss, would later be considered part of the "second Chicago School of Sociology".

[11][12] In 2004, Un sociologue en liberté: Lecture d'Howard S. Becker by French sociologist Alain Pessin was released in France.

[13] Becker explored the theory in which deviance is simply a social construction used to persuade the public to fear and criminalize certain groups.

[15] A compilation of early essays on the subject, Outsiders outlines Becker's theories of deviance through two deviant groups; marijuana users and dance musicians.

[6] Chapters three and four of Outsiders, which were originally published in the American Journal of Sociology in 1953, examine how marijuana users come to be labeled as social deviants.

[3] As a musician, Becker had first hand experience with drug culture and was able to obtain interview participants through his connections to the music scene.

[6][17] The first of the articles, "Becoming a Marihuana User", outlines how social interaction plays a role in learning to use and enjoy the effects of the drug.

[16] The musicians, according to Becker, place themselves counter to non-musicians or "squares", which in turn strengthens and isolates them as a deviant culture.

From this point of view, deviance is not a quality of the act the person commits, but rather a consequence of the application by other of rules and sanctions to an "offender."

[3] Becker believed that the field was underdeveloped and consisted mainly of thinly veiled value judgements of particular artists.

[19] Becker also references how the division of labor plays a role in the creation of artwork, in that the work of many individuals goes into the production of the tools and routines of the artist.

[19] In addition to the tools necessary for the process of creation, Becker also emphasizes the role that shared meaning plays in ascribing value to art.

[13] According to Becker, the book is composed of information he learned from students while teaching a seminar at Northwestern University on sociological writing style.

"[3] Thus, Becker advises scholars to write in a direct style, avoiding the passive voice and abstract nouns.

[13] The book focuses on Becker's belief that it is impossible to establish a method of research independent of the situation it is being used in.

[3] According to Becker, the principles of social research he describes in the book are based primarily on what he learned from his professors and colleagues at the University of Chicago.

[22] Furthermore, Becker promotes systematic data collection and rigorous analysis as a way to make sense of social world.