Continuity and Change in Howard S. Becker's Work

Howard S. Becker is one of the foremost sociologists of the second half of the twentieth century. Although he is perhaps best known for research on deviance and his book Outsiders, this constitutes only a very small fraction of his earliest work. This interview looks at some of the continuities and cores of his work over fifty years. Becker highlights how his work maintains the same core concerns, although new interests have been added over time. At the core is a concern with “work” and “doing things together.” Becker provides many concrete stories from the past and also raises issues about the nature of doing theory and research, how he writes and produces his studies, and the problems attached to the professionalization of sociology. His writing on art and culture can be seen as assuming a major position in his later work, but he does not identify with either postmodernism or cultural studies.