Review: [untitled]

Author(s): Kai T. Erikson

Source: The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 69, No. 4 (Jan., 1964), pp. 417-419
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2775112
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BOOK REVIEWS
Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance.
S. BECKER.New York: Free
By HOWARD
Press of Glencoe, 1963. Pp. x+179. $5.00.
Any person who wishes to become better
acquainted with the major trends in contemporary sociology will profit from studying
this new book by Howard S. Becker. The
point of view represented in the book will
not surprise sociologists already familiar with
Becker's earlier papers on marijuana users
and dance musicians, both of which appear
here in much their original form, but the
interesting work he began in those papers
has been rounded out here into a relevant and
well-argued position. The best way to describe
Becker's approach, perhaps, is to say that it
belongs to the older Chicago tradition: it is
pure sociology, drawing the reader's attention
wholly to the social context in which deviance
occurs and paying little attention to larger
abstractions like the "American culture" or
smaller abstractions like "individual personality."
Becker begins his argument by noting that
definitions of deviancy vary widely as we
range across the various groups and classes
whch make up social life. Since no single
criterion can be used to decide what forms of
conduct are deviant and what forms are not,
we can only develop a reasonable grasp of
the problem by studying the setting in which
one group of persons confers a deviant label
on another. "The central fact" about deviant
behavior, Becker says, is that "it is created
by society."
I do not mean this in the way it is ordinarily
understood,in which the causes of deviance are
located in the social situation of the deviant or
in "social factors" which prompt his action. I
mean, rather, that social groups create deviance
by making the rules whose infraction constitutes
deviance,and by applying those rules to particular people and labeling them as outsiders.From
this point of view, deviance is not a quality of
the act a person commits, but rather a consequence of the applicationby others of rules and
sanctions to an "offender."The deviant is one
to whom that label has successfullybeen applied;
deviant behavior is behavior that people so label
[pp. 8-9].

The population covered by Becker's definition, then, includes all people who "share the
label and the experience of being labeled as
outsiders" (p. 10). Deviance is not a property of behavior; it is an outcome of the
interaction between someone who is thought
to have violated the rules of the group and
others who call him to account for that delinquency.
One of the most compelling themes in the
book is Becker's contrast between what he
calls "simultaneous" and "sequential" models
of deviation. The ingredient missing in most
contemporary models of deviant behavior, he
argues, is a coherent sense of the passage of
time: social-science literature is full of studies
which relate deviant behavior to one or
another kind of background factor-the
broken family is a traditional example-but
few of these studies inquire whether these
background factors act on the individual in
any kind of orderly sequence. Becker suggests that this is indeed the case and describes
the process by which an individual learns to
develop a deviant style as if it were analogous
to the process by which the rest of us learn
a "career." People who become marijuana
users or dance musicians, like those who become physicians or airline pilots, learn their
trades and the behavior modes appropriate to
them in a sequence of steps, a specific
chronology. Assuming that most readers of
this Journal are already familiar with Becker's
work on marijuana users and dance musicians,
where this argument was first spelled out, I
need only add that the older papers and the
newer theory fit together in a convincing
fashion. The case presented is a good one and
is skilfully argued.
Another important theme of the book is
that the study of deviance must pay as much
attention to the social condition of the rule
enforcer as it does to that of the rule violator.
In some respects, Becker views the interactions between the two as almost a raw
contest for power. Enforcers are people with
enough power to impose their moral preferences on others, and violators are people who
fall victim to this authority. Marijuana users

417

418

THE AMERICANJOURNALOF SOCIOLOGY

and dance musicians (and by extension other

kinds of deviants) do not feel that their way
of life is improper, but they become outsiders
in the sociological sense because people with
other views are able to confer a deviant label
on them. There is even an underlying suggestion in Becker's argument that deviant
groups and the agencies which censure them
live by two different cultural standards:
dance musicians reject the members of their
audience by calling them "square," and, according to Becker's account, the audience rejects the musicians as "deviant." Should the
tables be turned (and in certain conditions
they are) it is presumably possible that the
deviants become the conformists and impose
their moral preferences on the new minority.
All of this sounds a little as if an army of
occupation were imposing its rules on an
oppressed populace; it certainly does not give
much credit to the force of a larger culture
hanging over both groups. But Becker does
a fascinating job with this rather unusual
thesis. He begins with the story of the
Marijuana Tax Act showing that the enforcers really invented a new morality in
their efforts to prosecute users of the drug,
and manages to make a strong argument for
his point. It makes powerful reading.
The book is rich in thoughtful concepts,
many more than a review of this length could
begin to discuss. Although most readers will
admire both the scope and style of the book,
however, there are several points which may
cause some concern.
Some readers, for example, will wonder how
useful it is to employ terms like "deviant"
and "outsider" interchangeably. It can be
done, of course, and with good effect-but
from a purely tactical point of view it would
seem that the kinds of social pressures which
isolate dance musicians from the main flow of
social life and the kinds of pressures which
drive other individuals into mental hospitals
or prisons are different enough to require a
narrower set of definitions.
Other readers will share with me a certain
disappointment that the book has so little
appreciation of personality theory. I do not
mind that Becker fails to talk about human
motivation, but I am disturbed that his approach almost entirely rules it out as a relevant variable. "Instead of deviant motives
leading to deviant behavior," he says, "it is
the other way around; the deviant behavior

in time produces the deviant motivation"

(p. 42). There is a good deal of truth in this
assertion, of course, more than is recognized
by many students of personality; yet on the
whole this is probably a more relevant way
to look at marijuana users than at other
people typically considered deviant. Few
students familiar with the hospital setting will
find this a compelling way to look at mental
patients. And in general, the evidence that
deviant styles usually fall to those who are
in some way motivated to receive them is
far too weighty to be dismissed so abruptly.
Personality disorder may not be the most
important qualification for deviant niches in
the social order-even for beds in the mental
hospital-but it is difficult to visualize the
transactions by which people are selected for
deviant labels unless we look closely at the
motives of those who manage to get themselves chosen.
Finally, one of the most impressive motifs
in Becker's book is also one of the most difficult to come to terms with-namely, the
"(career"analogy which runs throughout the
text. There are many respects in which the
life history of a deviant becomes clearer if
we think in terms of career lines: the use
of the term helps suggest that deviant styles
are learned and often occur in gangs, clubs,
and other kinds of miniature societies. Yet
the analogy is only useful up to a point, for
many of the people we call deviant become
social problems exactly because they find it
difficult to organize their own lives into a
coherent pattern (even a deviant one) or
to join together into protective bands. Perhaps certain groups of marijuana users and
dance musicians are able to achieve this kind
of organization and continuity, but many
others are not. Again, the mental patient is
a prominent example, and within certain
limits the same can be said of many of the
people who end up in prison or other institutions of controL
Something in the structure of the situation
prevents deviant groups from becoming too
well organized, too confident of their own
group moralities, or else we would be in a
perpetual state of insurrection. This "something," it seems to me, is the fact that most
of the people who find themselves labeled
deviant accept this label as legitimate and
even help attach it to themselves. They may
not like the label; they may even invent ideol-

BOOKREVIEWS
ogies which scorn the standards used to censure
them; but at some level of consciousness they
too accept the legitimacy of the rules which
have resulted in their fate.
These objections may seem to cover a
wide scope, but they are minor all the same.
The main value of Becker's book is that he
remains true to his own special angle of
vision on the problem and has carried the
logic of that position to its richest conclusion.
The book is highly recommended.
KAI

T.

ERIKSON

Emory University
School of Medicine

On Revolution. By HANNAH ARENDT. New

York. Viking Press, 1963. Pp. 343. $6.50.

419

this cannot become a century of warfare, but it

most certainly will become a century of total
revolutions. The universal goal of war is revolution. But even without the possibility of limited agreements, revolution will come to define
the character of the modern uses of violence and
the present impulse toward freedom and liberty.
3. Revolution in the modern age has been concerned with two distinct drives: liberation (absence of restraint and increase in social mobility)
and freedom (political level of life). While liberation is consonant with various forms of government, freedom is only possible through a republican form of government, which explains why the
American, French, and Russian revolutions all
adopted this form of rule.
4. The two fundamental models of revolution
are the American and French revolutions-though
only the French Revolution became the basic
model for Marxism. The American Revolution
adhered to the original purpose of revolutionmaking-freedom-while
the French Revolution
abdicated freedom in the name of historical necessity. The American Revolution was thus profoundly political and antihistorical while the
French Revolution was historical and profoundly
antipolitical.
5. The French revolutionary model, the model
adopted by Marxism and which penetrated the
ideological and organizational aspects of the Russian Revolution, was concerned with the social
question-with
problems of exploitation, mass
alienation and poverty. It was inspired by the
idea of compassion. The American revolutionary
model was concerned with the political question,
with problems of policies and the predicaments
which flowed from an elitist theory of mass human nature. Its revolutionary passion did not
give way to compassion.
6. The weaknesses of the "classic" French model are revealed in the abortive aspects of the
major revolutions of the modern era-the Paris
Commune, the Russian Revolution, the Hungarian
uprising. In each case there was the rise of two
distinctive forces: the party, acting in the name
of the people, and the voluntary associations
(workers' councils, soviets, communes) or the
people as a collective. The force of power over
the people, in the betrayal of the revolution, came
through the consecration of political parties, while
the council system, because it failed to realize
itself as a new form of government as such (as
in the American Revolution) tended to be shortlived. It is this fact which accounts for the perfidy of modern revolutionary movements-the
breakdown of voluntary association and its replacement by a swollen bureaucracy.

When confronted by intuitive brilliance,

there is a temptation to review the personality
rather than the performance. On Revolution
is a continuation of discussions first broached
in The Human Condition and in The Origins
of Totalitarianism. Since this work is something less than social science and something
more than mere speculation, perhaps a prosaic
ordering of Miss Arendt's materials is not
only forgivable but necessary. Overlooking
her contempt for the "modern debunking
'sciences' psychology and sociology," I shall
state her position in propositional form and
offer some lines of disagreement and further
inquiry.
1. War and revolution have violence as their
common denominator.Conflict derives from fratriddal instincts, while political organizationhas
its roots in crime. Crucial to revolution in the
modern age is the concurrenceof the idea of
freedom and the experienceof new social beginnings, of apocalypse.
2. Revolution gains a new significanceas war,
its partner in violence, becomes an implausible
way to effect social change.Total annihilationhas
transformedthe character of the military from
protector of civitas into a futile avenger. Even
prior to the nuclearage, wars had become politically, though not yet physically,a matter of national survival because of the widespread fear
that the vanquishedpower will suffer the subjugation of its political organization.Non-technological factors in warfare have been eliminated
so that the results of war may be calculatedin
These propositions indicate Miss Arendt's
advance with perfect precision.Foreknowledgeof
victory and defeat may well end a war that need morphology of revolution. While it is not
never explode into reality. If we are to survive, possible to argue this book's thesis in terms