-
Chicago, Jazz and Marijuana: Howard BeckeronOutsiders*
Thaddeus MllerErasmus University Rotterdam
In this article on the social production of Outsiders I will
situate itsmaking in the daily practice of the social worlds Becker
was involvedin. Therefore I focus on the relations, interactions
and situations whichwere relevant for the form, content and success
of Outsiders. The frag-ments from my email communication with
Becker, the collected inter-views and other publications show that
Becker demysties Outsiders.In fact my contribution here is that I
use Becker to demystify the ethno-graphic practice of Outsiders and
describe its mundane backstage real-ity, which is described by Fine
as the underside of ethnography (1993).Keywords: Becker, Outsiders,
biography, methodology, Chicago
Within criminology and sociology,Outsiders. Studies in the
Sociology of Deviance byHoward Becker (1963) is seen as a
pioneering study. In that book, he focuses on howprofessionals in
the police and the court define crime. This theory became known
aslabeling. His approach extended to showing how becoming a member
of a deviantsubculture, like the jazz world, also involved learning
how to label experiences, suchas the use of marijuana. The reviews
ofOutsiderswere in general very positive. It washighly recommended
(Erikson 1963: 419), exceptionally interesting (Sykes 1964:135),
and an essential book (Cohen 1964: 197). Outsiders has become a
sociologi-cal bestseller and had sold between 100,000 and 150,000
copies by the mid-nineties(Gans 1997). It remains one of the most
highly cited studies within criminology.
Mymain interest here is to understand how it was possible for
Becker towrite sucha breakthrough book in a period inwhich the
commonunderstanding of cannabis andcrime was deeply conservative.
How is his own (academic and social) deviance to beexplained? It is
well known that Becker played piano professionally, as he states
inOutsiders. However, a less well examined question is how his
participation in the
Direct all correspondence to Thaddeus Mller, Erasmus University
Rotterdam, P.O. Box 1738,Burgermeester Oudlaan 50 L Building,
Rotterdam, Zuid Holland 3000, the Netherlands;
e-mail:[email protected].
*This article is based on an earlier version published in Dutch.
I want to thank the anonymousreviewers and Robert Dingwall for
their supportive comments. Finally, I want to thank Howie forhis
cooperation during the making of this article.
Symbolic Interaction, (2014), p. n/a, ISSN: 0195-6086
print/1533-8665 online. 2014 Society for the Study of Symbolic
Interaction. All rights reserved.DOI: 10.1002/SYMB.119
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2 Symbolic Interaction 2014
Chicago jazz world influenced Outsiders. In this paper, I
attempt to answer thesequestions by researching the creation of
Outsiders from the perspective of Beckerhimself, and through
textual analysis of existing interviews. As part of this study,I
draw on email interviews with Howard Becker, who is now 86 (born
18-4-1928). Ialso include excerpts from other existing interviews
and publications in which Beckerrefers toOutsiders. I reordered the
selected fragments and put them in a timeline inorder to understand
the historical development of Outsiders.
When I first initiated contact with Howard Becker, and asked him
whether hewanted to be interviewed aboutOutsiders, he made it clear
that his preference wouldbe an interview via email. Our
communication also shows that he is not greatly inter-ested in
Outsiders. Becker says that he never actually saw himself as a
sociologist ofdeviance. At the beginning of his career he saw
himself as a sociologist of professions,in the tradition of Everett
Hughes, and later as a sociologist of art. Yet Becker
revealshimself in his work as a demystifier. He does not accept
commonsense ideas aboutdrugs and art, and confronts the front-stage
rhetoric of institutions with what he dis-covers in the mundane
social reality of back stage activities. After emailing him
thischaracterization, he stated that he liked the idea of being a
demystifier and added thatthat sounded right to him. An example of
this approach is to be seen in Art Worlds(1982), where he does not
focus on the individual special qualities of artists, and howthese
shaped their art, which used to be the common approach in the
sociology ofart. Instead, he looks at the whole process in which
many are involved in the makingof art (Becker 1982:1).
In this article I will approach Outsiders in a similar way. Like
an artwork, Out-siders is also the result of Doing Things Together,
the title of a collection of articlesBecker published in 1986,
which captures his sociological approach. To understandhow it was
possible that Outsiders was published in the early 1960s, I will
situateits making in the daily practice of the social worlds in
which Becker was involved.Therefore, in this article I will focus
on the relations, interactions and situationswhich were relevant
for the form, content and success of Outsiders. The fragmentsfrom
the collected interviews and other publications show that Becker
also demysti-fies Outsiders. My contribution here is to use Becker
to demystify the ethnographicpractice of Outsiders. I describe its
mundane backstage reality, which is describedby others as the
underside of ethnography (Fine 1993) and its true
confessions(Ferrell 1998).
Shalin (2013) can also be seen as a demystifier of our
sociological profession.He has been building up the Goffman
Archives, based on many interviews withpersons who were close to
Goffman, in order to explore the relationship betweenbiography,
theory, and history. In fact Shalin can also be seen as a
reputationalentrepreneur, meaning that he is managing the
reputation of Goffman (Fine 1996).Shalins approach, which he
himself describes as biocritical hermeneutics, showsthat there is a
strong relation between Goffmans work and his biography. Althoughmy
ambition is minute compared to Shalins project, in this article I
will show that, inthe case of Becker, there are also intersections
between his biography andOutsiders.
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Howard Becker on Outsiders 3
Though the concept reputational entrepreneur, originally refers
to a personwhoshapes the reputation of another in a particular way
(Fine 1996: 1162), it can alsobe applied to the protagonist him or
herself. In this sense, Becker can be seen as areputational
entrepreneur in relation to his own career. Beckers strategy is a
par-ticular oneof modesty. He has given many interviews in which he
has been candidabout his past. Becker talks about himself in a
modest and sober way as will becomeclear in this article. There is
hardly any mystique. What you see is what you get.
His humility has been related to several aspects of his social
life. Robert Faulknerrelates Beckers modesty to his position as a
piano player in a jazz ensemble:
This centrality [of the piano player, TM] has something to do
with identity.Piano players are typically the most reflective,
something of the intellectualsof the cats; and since they often
know chord changes, they are being placedin the position of being
constrained to provide the basics for others and theirimprovisation
. . . . Having hung out with Becker and Piano Genius [sic]
BillEvans (on separate occasions, of course). I will say they had
remarkably similarpersonal styles: sweet, reasonable, articulate,
deep, put up with no bullshit(Katz 1994: 275).
His modesty is also strongly related to his methodological
approach. It is thenaive outlook in which qualitative researchers
need to listen carefully to what thefield tells them and to be open
for new interpretations (see also Katz 1994). In thenext citation
of Katz on artists, based onArt Worlds, the reader can actually
discovera description of Beckers own career.
In successful careers, humility about ones own contributions
becomes not simplya gracious posture but a foundation for continued
originality (Katz 1994: 271).
His modesty is not only related to his methodological approach,
but also to thetheoretical notions he develops in his work. The way
Becker portrays himself as acreative academic fits with his
demystifying analysis of his research subjects.
That being said Beckers approach colors this article in the
sense that he seems todownplay his role. His outlook might actually
mask his own role in the creation ofhis work. This can be seen as a
downside of choosing to reconstruct the creation ofOutsiders
through the eyes of Becker. The perspective of colleagues, gained
throughinterviews, might be a good antidote to Beckers modesty. But
this suggestion (forfurther research) is beyond the scope of this
article.
I have categorized different periods, which have been relevant
for Beckers newapproach to deviant behavior. In the next section, I
will describe how Becker, as ajazz pianist, gets involved in the
criminal world of Chicago and how this contributesto the
development of a kind of outsider view. Thirdly, I will show how
Beckersperspective was formed by Hughess statement: everything is
somebodys work.In the fourth section, I will describe the
anthropological roots of Outsiders. Fifthly,I will focus on the
methodological practice, in which I discuss, for instance,
Beckerspersonal involvement with this field of research. Beckers
own hindsight evaluation
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4 Symbolic Interaction 2014
of Outsiders will be discussed in the sixth section. I will end
with some conclusionsand an afterword.
A KIND OF OUTSIDER VIEW
In his essay about his childhood in Chicago, where he was born
and raised, Becker(2009) describes how he learned to observe when
he was ten. Using the L, theelevated train system, he traveled
across all parts of Chicago and encountered thesocial, cultural and
spatial diversity of urban life. Becker describes how he
wouldtravel with his friends from the far West Side of the city
(where he used to live) tothe Loop, the downtown center.
Travelling through the city, Becker developed an attentive eye
for what wenton in its diverse public world of strangers. He
practiced the basic social skill ofobservingnecessary for any
professional spectator of urban life. His personalexperience was
one of enjoying the city by observing its adventurous
diversity.Beckers Chicago was a city is of freedom, excitement and
curiosity, not a place toavoid and fear. Becker saw the buildings
and how they varied from place to place.He learned the
characteristic ethnic patterns of the city by reading the signs on
thebusinesses he went by. He saw people of different racial and
ethnic groups as theygot on and off the train, and learned who
lived where (Becker 2009). This contrastssharply with the depiction
in Wirths (1938) famous article Urbanism as a Way ofLife, with its
focus on the anonymous doom and gloom of cities. The statements
onurban life in this article are based on a diverse range of
studies of social problemsinspired by Robert Park, such as The Gold
Coast and The Slum (Zorbaugh 1929),The Taxi Dance Hall (Cressey
1932) and The Gang (Thrasher 1927). In fact, Wirthsarticle was
something of a swansong: the heyday of the so-called Chicago
schoolwas actually over by 1938. Subsequently, its ethnographic
tradition was carried for-ward on a much smaller scale,
particularly by Everett Hughes, a student of RobertPark and later
Beckers mentor.
Before Becker was influenced by his training at the University
of Chicago, hisperspective on crime and authority was already
formed by his experiences as a jazzmusician. We have already seen
that Becker was an independent child from his earlyteens, enjoying
the freedom of the city and developing an eye for urban life.
Fromthe age of fourteen (1942), another dimension was added to his
perspective when hestarted to play in jazz bands and encountered
the social world of club night life in thecity. The bandstand was a
perfect platform to observe the interaction in the locationswhere
Becker played.
All the places I played in were sites of observation, though I
didnt think of themthat way, and didnt think that I was doing
anything as important or grand asobserving. I was just living
(Becker 2009).
Part of what Becker called living included developing his
observation skills whichhe already used as a child traversing the
city. Becker (2009) writes that he watched
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Howard Becker on Outsiders 5
night after night as men who had come to Chicago for, perhaps, a
business con-vention, bought drinks for the strippers in the first
club where he played, spendingthousands of dollars without even
getting any sex for it. Occasionally someone wellknown could be
seen sitting in the back of the club masturbating while the girls
tooktheir clothes off. People flirted with each other. Fights
between two people wouldturn into major brawls, occasionally
involving the club owner and the bartender aswell as the customers.
Police officers stopped by to collect bribes from the owner ofthe
club.
The experience of the jazz world is very similar to that of the
city: adventure,excitement and curiosity. Though the jazz world was
heavily influenced by the mafia,fear, coercion and social control
are not central to Beckers observations. Never-theless,
participation in the jazz world enabled Becker to observe a wide
variety ofcriminal behavior, such as bribery, violence and
prostitution.
To my question whether he got used to crime and deviance by
participating inthe jazz world he answers that my guess is right.
He states that the easiest way tounderstand this was that he was a
musician long before he was a sociologist. Throughparticipating in
the jazz world he not only got used to crime, but also developed
acritical stance towards society and its mores.
And, for a sociologist, I think it [jazz, TM] inoculated me
against believing con-ventional pieties about the society I lived
in and studied. I knew better (aboutthe police, about drugs, about
music, about the motives of important people, allthat.) (2013).
By being part of the jazz world Becker developed the perspective
of the outsider.This marginal position helped him to look from a
critical distance at behavior thatwas taken for granted by others,
a position which was also advocated by his latermentor Hughes.
I think that, in being a sociologist, one of the things that
really is advantageous,is to have a kind of outsider view of
things, so that youre not simply acceptingwhat everyone else
believes as the God-given truth. Instead you say, Oh yeah,well lets
have a look, lets see. At the age of 15 or so, I was playing in
tavernsand watching the bar-owners bribe the police and seeing all
kinds of shady thingsgoing on. First of all, I knew that the
policeman was not my friend. ( ). It givesyou a second standpoint
(Jackson 2010).
EVERYTHING IS SOMEBODYS WORK
The independent critical view on social life which Becker used
in Outsiders wasalready roughly formed before Becker entered the
academic world. Becker didnot make a conscious decision to study
sociology. This was related to a diverserange of circumstances,
such as his relationship with his father, the violence inthe club
scene, and his chance encounter with Black Metropolis (Drake
andCayton 1945).
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6 Symbolic Interaction 2014
I was playing the piano and . . . working for a bunch of Mafiosi
in these bars. Ifigured that this is not a healthy business for a
nice Jewish kid to be in. One ofthese days theyre going to get mad.
And Id seen them get mad at people. Its notgood.Andmy father,
although I wasnt payingmuch attention to him, but the ideathat his
son would become a tavern piano player was, like, Jesus! So I
thoughtId give this a try. ( ) I was beginning to see that I was
probably not going tobe a great jazz pianist. And so, you know, Ill
keep on going to school. Its kindof interesting ( ). It was
something to do. Sociology was kind of a last minutechoice. I
decided I should go to graduate school. So what field should I be
in? AndI thought, English. Because I like to read novels, and, what
the hell, Ill read a lotof novels and that will be school.What
could be bad about that? And then, I thinkit was the summer maybe
it was the spring before I entered the sociologydepartment, I read
Black Metropolis. It was cool in the way that anthropologymust have
seemed cool to a lot of people then. ( ). But Black Metropolis
wasurban anthropology. ( ) So I went to the sociology department.
It was just thatsimple. I barely knew what it was (Molotch 2012:
433).
Black Metropolis is a well written and sparkling study of the
black community inChicago. It contains interviews and observations
that give readers the perspective ofbeing in the midst of this
community and seeing what goes on. Beckers enthusiasmabout the
anthropological quality of Black Metropolis not only led him to
sociology,but the book was also the beginning of a lifelong
interest in an anthropological orethnographic approach to social
life.
Because Becker wrote notes about where he was working as a jazz
musician, atavern on 63rd Street, for one of Burgesss classes, he
came into contact with EverettHughes.
At the end of the quarter I gave them (the notes, TM) to
Burgess. And when hegave them back he said, This is occupations and
professions. Thats ProfessorHughes. ( ) He said, Well, give me your
notes and come back in a week. Hewas very brusque. Okay. I went
away and came back in a week. Mr. Becker, comeright in. Sit down. (
) So, he said, he read my notes, and [theyre] full of peopleputting
squares down andmaking fun of the people in the bar and all that.
And hesaid it was like gold to him. His methodological principle
was that anything yousee in a lowly occupation is probably going on
in a higher-status occupation, onlythey wont tell you. He chose me
for a completely venal reason: I would furtherhis research (Molotch
2012: 434).
Hughes was one of the few later sociologists in Chicago, as I
already mentioned,who conducted research in the tradition
established by Robert Park and showed afundamental interest in
doing fieldwork. In fact, Hughes was an important link, atleast as
significant as Blumer, in passing this approach on to students in
Chicago, suchas Erving Goffman and Anselm Strauss, at a time when
quantitative methods werestarting to dominate sociology (Becker
1999; Strauss 1996; Vienne 2010). Severalof the students shared
Beckers critical view on society (Galliher 1995: 165). Yearslater
Becker is still enthusiastic about his time at the University of
Chicago after theSecond World War:
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Howard Becker on Outsiders 7
It was a very exciting place. There were an awful lot of good
sociologists inmy age group. ( ) I cant even begin to tell you all
the people who were inmy classErving Goffman, David Gold, Bill
Kornhauser, Eliot Freidson, JimShortI could go on half a day naming
them. We were all very excited aboutsociology, andwe talked very
seriously about it so that there was a lot of educationgoing on
among students themselves (Debro 1986: 27, see also Fine 1995).
Hughes not only had a great influence on Beckers methodological
approach,but also influenced how Becker perceived crime in a
sociological way, which fittedthe critical amoral view that he
developed in the jazz-world (see also Galliher1995:164165). In our
email contact, Becker stated that what really solidified hisideas
about deviance was Everett Hughes remark that everything is
somebodyswork, which Becker applied to deviance. Becker writes that
once you have that ideait almost writes itself. He remarks that two
questions are central: Whose work is itto create deviance and
enforce rules against it? (See also Galliher 1995:167).
This was essential for Beckers approach inOutsiders. Because he
did not look atlaw-breaking from a criminological perspective, with
its strong focus on why crimi-nals behaved theway they did, he
could shine a different light on criminal and deviantbehavior
(Galliher 1995: 170, 181).
The study of crime lost its connection with the mainstream of
sociological devel-opment and became a very bizarre deformation of
sociology, designed to find outwhy people were doing bad things
instead of finding out the organization of inter-action in that
sphere. ( ) So I approached deviance as the study of people
whoseoccupation, onemight say, was either crime or catching
criminals. (..) In a way, Imsurprised that I had such notions in
1954. In another way, it was a natural idea fora sociologist to
have who hadnt been trained in criminology (Debro 1986: 33).
Hughes also influenced the accessible literary style of
Outsiders, which made thebook an easy read and contributed to it
becoming a bestseller. According to Hughes,any sociological
publication should be written in a clear style without the use of
pre-tentious jargon. Once Hughes got angry with Becker because he
gave him an articlewhich, according to Hughes, was so unreadable
that it looked like a German articletranslated into English.
Hughes was also influential in the theme of Beckers
dissertation. After Beckerfinished his masters thesis on jazz
musicians, he wanted to do his dissertation on thenightlife in
Chicago, and the relation between different categories in this
world, suchas waitresses, musicians and criminals.
When I did my masters thesis it was about that world [jazz, TM]
and I intendedto write my dissertation about something like that
world. Maybe the world ofnightlife in one of the big club areas of
Chicago. Which I knew and I knew thatthese areas of the city, that
people from a lot of different world congregated there.Not just
themusicians, the people whoworked in the bars, the bartenders, the
peo-ple who serve drinks, the waitresses and the waiters, criminals
who hung around inthese places. ( ) College students in from the
suburbs for the weekend, having abig time. It was a little like
watching a big aquariumwith a lot of different fishes, of
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8 Symbolic Interaction 2014
different sizes. And the criminals were always ready to gobble
up a college studentor two, or the waitresses. Or the college
students were looking to gobble up thewaitresses. It was very
complicated and I thought that would be a very wonderfulinteresting
thesis. And then my mentor, Everett Hughes, got a research grant,
tostudy the Chicago School system and he wanted to hire me to
interview schoolteachers. Well you know, it is a long way from the
bars of West Street to talkingto school teachers. And that did not
sound to me like a very exciting prospect,but I needed a job. I
just got married, so I said okay and began
interviewingschoolteachers (Back 2012).
Because of the mundane fact of earning ones living and the job
offer byHughes, Beckers dissertation on the nightlife of Chicago
became the classic urbanstudy that (sadly) was never done. Still
his involvement in the jazz world con-tinued to have a positive
effect on his academic career. Because he focused onhis jazz
career, he was less tense about his dissertation and did not take
it tooseriously.
I got my PhD very young, I was 23, and that was for a variety of
organizationalreasons. It didnt mean I was smarter than anybody
else. It really didnt. I wentthrough the PhD program very quickly
because I wasnt serious about it and itwas kind of a hobby. The
real business was playing the piano: I was studying withTristano.
So I never worried about exams, I never worried about any of it, I
justdid it. Like I say, kind of as a hobby (Jackson 2010).
In accordance with his sociological line of reasoning, Becker
did not focus on hisown qualities, but on organizational reasons to
explain that he did his PhD in twoyears, which, by any standards,
is also an indication of his outstanding academic qual-ity. At the
same time, his early promotion turned out to be a disadvantage
becausenobody wanted to offer a young man like him a job. Because
of this he remained inChicago, where he knew how to make a living
as a jazz musician. Later on he did hisstudy on marijuana
users.
You see, I had trouble getting a teaching job. ( ) people could
hire a grown-upman for the same price. They didnt want some kid. I
really had a difficult time,because jobs were quite tight. So I
hung around Chicago where I knew I couldmake a living playing the
piano (Debro 1986: 29).
His youth had another effect on his academic career. It affected
his research inseveral ways: the access to persons with whom he
could hang around with and thebehavior he could observe. Another
issue related to his age has been raised by JackKatz (1994). He has
described eloquently how the different ages of Becker duringhis
career have influenced his interpretation of the social world he
studied. In hisfirst work on marihuana users the dominant theme is
freedom, which is related to hisown personal experience of Chicago
(and its jazz word) as a place of freedom, adven-ture and
curiosity, while in later publications structural constraints for
the individualbecome more visible:
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Howard Becker on Outsiders 9
From an initially sanguine view of personality and motivation as
essentially freefrom abiding collective pressure, Beckers work
progressively understands moti-vational freedom as a challenge to
be sustained in the face of determining pres-sures residing in the
inevitably collective dimensions of personal action (Katz1994:
268).
In relation toOutsiders, Katz states the following:
As in the marijuana user essay itself, in his labelling
perspective on deviance,Becker was denying determinism and
sustaining an image of the individual insociety as essentially free
from the influence of acts he had conducted and statuseshe had
occupied earlier in his life. In a sense, his early work was a
celebration ofyouthful freedom in the face of shibboleths that
would foolishly deny it (Katz1994: 258).
The emphasis on freedom is not only related to Beckers youth,
but also to thepost war era, a time of conformity, control and
security, to which Becker and othercolleagues reacted by focusing
on the processes by which the individual activelycarves out a space
within an institutional structure, a fundamental problem of
post-war American society (Fine and Ducharme 1995: 125).
I SOMETIMES THINK OF MYSELF AS AN ANTHROPOLOGIST
The strong ethnographic quality of Outsiders can be traced to
Beckers lifelonginterest in anthropology. As I mentioned earlier,
Beckers choice for sociology wasdeeply related to his strong
appreciation of Black Metropolis. For different reasons,its
anthropological nature made Becker enthusiastic:
One of the things that turned me on was the ethnographic detail
( ). The otherwas a kind of vision of a comparative science of
communities. That idea reallycame from Lloyd Warner and it turned
me on too. I think I probably had it morein mind to be an
anthropologist, not that I had made much distinction betweenthe two
(Debro 1986: 26).
In Outsiders Becker showed that the method of field research is
his favoritemethod to describefirst handdeviant behavior and
understand its meaning indetail. I already mentioned that Hughes,
who was a friend and colleague of theanthropologist Robert Redfield
(who was the son-in-law of Robert Park), was anadvocate of this
method and that he passed this tradition on to his students. In
ouremail correspondence Becker indicates that students learned to
do fieldwork by akind of informal apprenticeship. In the sociology
department at Chicago, at the time,there were always older students
around who had done observation and who couldgive tips on what to
do.
The anthropological feel of Outsiders is not only related to
Hughes, but also tothe anthropologist Lloyd Warner, who studied
under Radcliffe Brown and wrote adissertation on the social
organization of the Murngin, a tribal society in Australia.
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10 Symbolic Interaction 2014
In an article on the Chicago School (Becker 1999), Becker
referred to Warnersunderestimated relevance for the ethnographic
tradition in the sociology departmentin Chicago (see also Fine
1995).1 Warner had a huge impact on the acceptance of thismethod
through his involvement as the supervisor of such studies as Street
CornerSociety (Whyte 1943), Black Metropolis (Drake and Cayton
1945) and Deep South(Davis, Gardner and Gardner 1941).
Whytes Street Corner Society ( ) was a model for all of us of
what a Chicagostyle field study ought to look like; as
wereBlackMetropolis and the otherWarnerinspired works (Becker 1999:
7).
Becker is still enthusiastic about Whyte. In our
email-interaction he said that hethoughtWhyte was one of the great
fieldworkers of all time and that his methodolog-ical appendix was
wonderful.
The importance of anthropology in the academic formation of
Becker is alsoindicated by the members of his
dissertation-committee. Beside Hughes, there wasthe anthropologist
Allison Davis from the School of Education and Lloyd Warner.Warner
not only shaped Becker indirectly by the studies in which he was
involved,but also directly by mentoring him.
His love for anthropology continued through his career and
shows, for instance,in his affection for the work of the French
anthropologist Bruno Latour. Evenrecently he referred explicitly to
his relation with anthropology during a lecturein Paris (4 November
2011): I sometimes think of myself as an anthropologist(Loloum
2011).
SO I CAME INTO CONTACTWITH DRUG USERS, YOU COULD SAY,BECAUSE I
WAS ONE
After his dissertation, in the early fifties, Becker continued
to work as a professionalpianist. Because of this he remained,
although at a distance, involved with the crim-inal world of
Chicago night-life, which continued during his marijuana research
forOutsiders.
The big boss, Joe Contino, was a small-time hoodlum who claimed
to be the uncleof a well-known accordion-playing pop star (and he
might have been). Joe woreexpensive suits and had a (sort of)
dapper air. His assistant, Ralph, did the dirtywork, filling the
bottles with Old Philadelphia and taking care of the
horse-racingbusiness in the afternoons. Joe had an arrangementwith
the local police. I didntknow the details, but I did on occasion
see him quietly handing a police officer aroll of bills (Faulkner
and Becker 2009: 56).
Outsiders is related to various studies: 1) two chapters come
from Beckersmasters thesis, which were published in 1951 and 1953
and 2) seven chapters were(directly and indirectly) related to the
marijuana research, of which two werepublished in 1953 and
1955.2
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Howard Becker on Outsiders 11
Masters Thesis
In Outsiders Becker states that his research forms an integrated
part of his workas a jazz pianist: I seldom did any formal
interviewing, but concentrated rather onlistening to and recording
the ordinary kinds of conversations that occurred amongmusicians.
Most of my observation was carried on the job and even on the stand
aswe played (1963: 8384).
Besides observations, Becker had many fleeting conversations
which were partand parcel of the social world of the jazz
musicians:
No, because a lot of my interviews were done not as interviews;
I didnt call some-one and say, I am going to interview you, can we
meet? ( ) like my mastersthesis was about musicians so I was
playing some place, we get off the stand, weget a beer and we start
talking. That counted as an interview for me; I am askingquestions.
I dont say to the guy, I am interviewing you now. Now we are in
adifferent relationship. We were just chatting, talking about
things that had hap-pened: did you hear about this, do you know
what happened to George? I thinkwe can get a job in this bar so we
dont have to work here anymore, etc. So thosewere, you know, its
not an interview in the classical sense of an interview, butI was
asking questions and getting answers and it would be completely
inappro-priate to pull out a notepad and start taking notes or pull
out my tape-recorder(Obrist 2005).
Becker has made it clear that his way of interviewing was not
only shaped byhis academic education, but also his own habit, which
developed in public transportreturning from his gigs in
Chicago:
Well, on the other hand its a habit. When I was in school and
learning all this, Iwas also playing the piano in Chicago. Like
most Chicagoans at that time, I didnthave an automobile. I was
playing in bars all over the city so I would take
publictransportation home.Weworked very late, so often at 3 or 4
oclock in themorningI would be the only person on the streetcar or
the bus, and I would talk to thedriver. Why not? So I learned a lot
about the business of bus driving how theyarranged their schedules,
what they liked about their work, what they tried toavoid (Jackson
2010).
Hughes stimulated Becker to write his first article, which
initially was rejected byseveral journals. Finally it was published
in theAmerican Journal of Sociology, whereHughes was one of the
editors.
I was working in Everetts office, and he said, About time you
wrote an article,the way he did. So I said, What should I write
about? He said, Take some-thing out of your masters thesis. I said,
What? He said, Just take some idea,and whatever sticks to it leave
in, and whatever doesnt leave out. I said, okay,sounds good. I did
that. And then he said, Now send it out to get it reviewed.So I
sent it to six different journals, all of which turned it down. So
Everett said,Goddamnit, send it to the AJS [American Journal of
Sociology], which he wasthe editor of. And it was accepted. This
was my introduction to the politics ofpublishing (Molotch 2012:
421422).
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12 Symbolic Interaction 2014
Marijuana Research
After his PhD Becker tried to work as a part-time researcher, so
he could stillspend time playing as professional jazz pianist.
Becker was inspired by Lindesmithsstudy, Opiate Addictions (1947)
in which he states that opiate addiction is stronglyrelated to a
social learning process, especially to how one gives meaning to the
phys-ical experience of taking drugs.
When I readAlfred Lindesmiths book,Opiate Addiction, ( ) I said,
this is reallyinteresting because its likemarijuana but it isnt,
because nobody gets withdrawalsickness from marijuana. So this
would be a great comparative study (Campbell2005, see also Galliher
1995: 170).
Becker tried to sell his idea for a marijuana study to the
Institute for JuvenileResearch run by Shaw and McKay, who initially
did not see its relevance.
I got a job at the Institute for Juvenile Research, whichwas a
state agency, actually,run by Clifford Shaw and Henry McKay, who
were the grand old men of delin-quency research. They had gotten a
big grant to study teenage opiate addictionfrom the National
Institute of Mental Health, and I found out about it. I didnthave a
job and I persuaded them to hire me half-time to do this marijuana
study Iwanted to do. They thought it was trivial because marijuana
wasnt habit-forming,so it wasnt a social problem. But somehow, I
dont quite know why, they decidedto take me on (Campbell 2005).
Becker says that his method for the marijuana research was
nothing special andthat he did not think of spending much time on
explaining his approach thoroughly.His way of interviewing is like
a conversation in which he focuses on letting the othertalk about
the use of marijuana.
So in a piece I did fifty years ago I was interested in how
people learned to smokemarijuana. I couldnt be there when they all
learned, so I interviewed them andsaid to them, How did you first
happen to smoke marijuana? Who introducedyou to it? What did you
think about it and when you first lit up a joint what didyou do?
And then what happened?( ) I dont think of it as a very complexor
complicated thing to do; its really just a conversation. You are
sitting next tosomebody on an airplane and you start talking to
them: What kind of work doyou do? Oh, you are an art curator. How
did you get started doing that? I meanits just that kind of
conversation (Obrist 2005).
Becker made it clear that his study has an inductive character,
similar to Linde-smiths study. Becker started with a general
heuristic model based on Blumers socialpsychology. After his
research, he read the literature on drugs.
Heres the thing. The marijuana thing didnt arise as a research
problem or aresearchable problem in the context of the literature
on drugs. It was a fairlystraightforward application of the kind of
social psychological theory I learnedfrom Herbert Blumer. But after
I did the research, then of course I had to goread the literature.
The literature on marijuana was almost nonexistent, so that
-
Howard Becker on Outsiders 13
was good since Im not a great scholar. I read the LaGuardia
Commission reportand I read whatever there was of the literature,
which wasnt much. ( ) I waslooking for a hook to hang this on and
it seemed obvious that all these other the-ories were theories
about personality, that there was a kind of personality that
wasaddiction-prone. (Campbell 2005, see also Galliher 1995: 167).My
own experience was that people of quite a variety of personality
types who Iknew in the music business smoked dope and enjoyed it,
even though they werenot, at least in any way that you could see on
the surface, particularly crazy. So Ithought that was probably
malarkey. And the answer seemed to me that it lay ina series of
steps. And the steps are really important (Campbell 2005).
Becker wrote the more theoretical chapters of Outsiders in the
slipstream of hispublished articles on marijuana use. At first he
did not know what to do with thismore essayistic text.
And at that same time, when I was writing the marijuana stuff
up, I sat down andwrote ninety pages about deviance. This is in
1953 or 1954, and I wrote ninetypages, too long for an article, not
long enough for a book. My friend Erving Goff-man would have
figured out a way to make a book out of it right away, which
Ididnt. Maybe ten years later I found this draft in a file and
said, Hey, this isntbad, and I sent it to Irwin Deutscher, who I
knew from Kansas City, and he said,You ought to publish this. You
ought to make a book out of this, this is prettyinteresting. And
then I got the idea of sandwiching the marijuana stuff and
themusician stuff in between parts of the essay on deviance. One of
the reviewers, Ithink it was Kai Erickson, pointed out that there
was a certain lack of coherencein this volume, which was absolutely
right (Plummer 2003: 22).
In Outsiders Becker does discuss his relation with the field,
but he does not state,for obvious reasons, that he was an active
participant in the social world of marijuanausers. He has since
become more explicit about his own use of drugs:
I came into contact with drug users because I was a 15-year-old
piano player inChicago, and I was working with a campus band at
Northwestern University. Iwasnt a student there. There was another
guy in the band, maybe a year olderthan me, a saxophone player, and
we got to talking and during the intermissionwe went out in the
parking lot and he produced a half pint of gin and asked if Iwanted
a drink. I didnt want to look square so I got it down, and the next
week,since I was such a good student, he produced a joint and asked
if I wanted to gethigh. I said sure, and I quickly realized that
that was better than drinking gin. SoI came into contact with drug
users, you could say, because I was one, and I wasin a trade where
most people did do that (Plummer 2003).
The use of drugs was common for jazzmusicians. Some of the
people Becker knewalso used hard drugs. Becker rejected heroin,
because he saw the negative impact onthe life of his colleagues
(see also Spunt 2014). He did try speed, but discovered itdid not
have any extra value for him:
No, it was ridiculous. Same thing with amphetamines. I took
Benzedrine a coupleof times and all that happened was I just talked
nonstop for hours and I talked
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14 Symbolic Interaction 2014
enough without any help. I couldnt see that that was any fun, so
I didnt do thatanymore (Campbell 2005).
LABELING THEORY WAS A COUNTERREVOLUTION
After his research on marijuana users, Becker did not do any
further research ondrugs or deviance. He commented on Outsiders in
several publications, putting thework into a more critical
perspective and accepting that some insights were not
welldeveloped. Because of his participation on several drug
advisory committees in thesixties and seventies, he had access to
more recent drug research. This improved hisinsights on the social
learning process.
It (the discussion between personality and drugs use) led me
down the wrongpath, actually, because it wasnt until years later
that I realized what that researchwas actually about because its
not about is it personality or not. Its about howpeople learn to
interpret their own inner sensations. I wrote these two later
papersafter LSD happened and that led me to understand what the
marijuana researchhad actually been about. It was a perfect place
to study that phenomenon becauseyou have this very ambiguous
physical and mental experience and then you haveto figure out what
happened to you. That helped me make sense out of the LSDthing
(Campbell 2005).
Becker also criticized Outsiders because it was restricted in
its findings: the bookdid not look at the political and economic
interests related to the drugs laws.
I found out many years later, through a young French scholar,
that what I wroteabout the development of these laws was very
ignorant. Franois-Xavier Dudouetwrote this wonderful thse about the
international control of illicit drugs ( ) Itsnot junkies in the
streets. Its the hospital and the doctors office where, every
day,there is so much cocaine, so much morphine used. Thats where
the money is. Therepresentatives of these countries wanted tomake
sure that nobody brought illicitdrugs into that market and
threatened their monopoly. So everything that hadbeen written about
this by everyone was wrong. ( ) So now, I have a
completelydifferent understanding of what happened. It is really a
matter of political andeconomic actors protecting their interests.
(Peretz et al. 2011).
In our email exchange, Becker states that the success of
Outsiders was greatlyinfluenced by societal change, especially the
increase of marijuana use among stu-dents (see also Katz 1994:
257). In the 1950s, his research on marijuana hardly gotany
attention. Becker indicates that, when he first gave a paper on
marijuana at aconference, no one thought it was very interesting.
It was sort of an oddity that onlyinterested students, who were
beginning to smoke dope then. The later persecutionof middle-class
students in the U.S. for marijuana violations stimulated a lot of
theinterest inOutsiders.
Becker states that his clear writing style, which he learned
fromHughes, probablyalso led to the success of Outsiders. In those
days most sociology books were a hardread, Becker said. Another way
in which he puts Outsiders into perspective is by
-
Howard Becker on Outsiders 15
explaining that he was influenced by several sociologists who
already worked in thefield of labeling, such as Tannenbaum (1938)
and Lemert (1951). He also makes clearthat others have improved his
insight on labeling such as Spector and Kitsuse (1977).
In Tricks of the Trade (1998), Becker debated the new character
of Outsiders bystating that he just used traditional sociological
concepts:
The so-called labeling theory revolution should have never been
required.It was not an intellectual or scientific revolution ( ).
No basic paradigms ofsociological thought were overturned. The
definition of the situation, forinstance W.I. Thomass great
contribution to sociologys vocabulary and wayof thinkingdirects us
to understand how the situation looks to the actors in it,to find
out what they think is going on so that we will understand what
goes intothe making of their activity (Becker 1998: 37).
Beckers opinion is that Outsiders never was a revolutionary
book:
Far from being a revolution, you could say that labeling theory
was a counter-revolution, a conservative return to a strand of
basic sociological thinking thathad somehow gotten lost in the
disciplines practice (Becker 1998: 38).
SOME CONCLUSIONS
By using Beckers demystifying observations of his own work; I
have been able todescribe the mundane backstage reality of the
making ofOutsiders. This article alsoshows how Outsiders is the
result of a collective action in which a range of per-sons were
involved over several years. I have described several periods in
whichdifferent social worlds influenced Beckers perspective in
Outsiders. His participa-tion in the social world of jazz musicians
has had a major impact on his notions oncrime, mores and the
police. He developed a kind of outsider view. His youthwas also a
major influence in how he perceived the social world he studied.
Hisfocus was on individual freedom over structural constrains (Fine
& Ducharme 1995,Katz 1994).
Everett Hughes had a great impact on Outsiders because of his
dictum every-thing is somebodys work. Because Becker approached
crime from sociology ofprofessions perspective, he was able to
create his deviant perspective on crime (Seealso Galliher
1995:171,180). Beckers interest in anthropology and his mentoring
byHughes andWarner in field research were decisive for the
ethnographic character ofOutsiders.
The findings described here also show that Becker was
(fleetingly) involved inthe criminal night life of Chicago, in
which the mob played an important role. It isa shame that Becker
did not follow up his initial idea to do research on this
topic,because of the mundane facts that one has to make a living,
and that Hughes wasmore interested in studying occupations and
professions. From this perspective, itis understandable that Becker
never perceived himself as a sociologist of deviant
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16 Symbolic Interaction 2014
behavior. But, paradoxically, this did lead to his breakthrough
within criminologyand his new approach on deviancy in
Outsiders.
Becker does mention his personal relationship with his field of
study inOutsiders,but not to the full extent he could have done,
for obvious reasons. Later, he didacknowledge that he was a native
in the social world of marijuana users and thathe interviewed his
buddies and observed a social world of which he was a full mem-ber.
But Becker refrained from discussing in depth how his personal
experiencescontributed to the insights he described in
Outsiders.
Becker gives credit to a range of persons who influenced him
such as Hughes,Lindesmith, Thomas, Blumer, Tannenbaum and Lemert.
Becker disagrees with therevolutionary status of Outsiders because
it was part of a tradition within sociologythat got forgotten. The
success of his book was largely related to a major change
insociety: the increase in students smoking marijuana. They could
defend themselveswith Outsiders in their hands against conservative
policymakers who criminalizedsmoking marijuana.
Throughout the article, Beckers modesty is dominant in almost
all citations. Hedownplays his role in favor of emphasizing the
influence of other academics and cir-cumstances. Still, the
citations also show the natural ease with which Becker
createdOutsiders. It seems almost deceivingly effortless how he
researches, does the analysisand writes. Without any doubt this is
an indication of his supreme academic talentwhich was needed to
create Outsiders. The downplaying of his role in the creationof
Outsiders does not only mask his unique talent, but also downplays
the personalroots of Beckers perspective on crime and society which
partly shaped his approachin Outsiders. By focusing on his youth it
became evident that his biography had amajor influence on
Outsiders.
AFTERWORD
After a break of some months, Becker emailed me and explained
that he had notreplied to some of my emails because he was involved
in finishing two books (WhatAbout Mozart? What About Murder?
Reasoning From Cases and ThinkingTogether with Rob Faulkner). At
the same time he sent me an article by Sanders(2013) about his
relation with Becker as his mentor and colleague. In my next emailI
referred to the importance of freedom in Beckers career, which has
been discussedin this article several times:
I also enjoyed reading the article by Clint Sanders. He captures
you well. Oneof my favorite quotes is this one: For, as Anselm
Strauss succinctly describedBeckers work, Youre easy....Its
liberty, freedom, thats what youre interestedin. I can relate to
that, but then again if you are interested in freedom you need alot
of discipline and self-control. That is what people seem to forget.
What I likeof our kind of qualitative research is the improvisation
part. ( ).
-
Howard Becker on Outsiders 17
I end my article by giving Becker the last word with his short
and witty reactionto my previous email, which characterizes the
slight subversive character of his mildirony.
Dear Thaddeus,I have the feeling that you know more about me
than I know myself. Could this betrue?Howie
NOTES
1. Warner is mentioned many times in A Second Chicago School?
(Fine 1995) but his influenceon the ethnographic tradition is not
highlighted in the way that Becker (1999) does in his article.
2. While I was trying to locate the four publications I
discovered that the references in the acknowl-edgements ofOutsiders
were incorrect. When I checked this with Becker, he reacted as
follows:
You are right! Its amazing that in all these years you are the
first person tonotice this glaring error. This is evidence for my
strong belief that no one everactually reads the things they cite
(well, almost no one, you are the first). Con-gratulations!
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ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTOR(S)
Thaddeus Mller has a position as a faculty member at the section
criminology at the RotterdamErasmus University. His
PhD-dissertation, The warm city (2002) is based on a
micro-sociologicalstudy of the (positive) meanings of fleeting
interactions among strangers in the public realm. Afterworking for
the University of Amsterdam and doing applied commercial research,
mostly relatedto urban communities, safety and youth hanging
around, Thaddeus Mller started at his currentposition in 2009. His
main interests are qualitative methods, urban ethnography, social
life in publicspaces, multicultural neighborhoods, drugs,
especially cannabis, and transgression and rock music(Lou Reed). He
has also published on academic fraud, especially the case of the
social psychologistsDiederik Stapel.