Top 3 Quotes & Sayings by Howard S. Becker

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American sociologist Howard S. Becker.

Last updated on April 14, 2025.

Howard Saul Becker is an American sociologist who teaches at Northwestern University. Becker has made contributions to the sociology of deviance, sociology of art, and sociology of music. Becker also wrote extensively on sociological writing styles and methodologies. Becker's 1963 book Outsiders provided the foundations for labeling theory. Becker is often called a symbolic interactionist or social constructionist, although he does not align himself with either method. A graduate of the University of Chicago, Becker is considered part of the second Chicago School of Sociology, which also includes Erving Goffman and Anselm Strauss.

American - Sociologist | Born: April 18, 1928

Source: Wikipedia

Laymen learn to read photographs the way they do headlines, skipping over them quickly to get the gist of what is being said. Photographers, on the other hand, study them with the care and attention to detail one might give to a difficult scientific paper or a complicated poem.

Howard S. Becker

Every part of the photographic image carries some information that contributes to its total statement; the viewer's responsibility is to see, in the most literal way, everything that is there and respond to it.

Howard S. Becker

Photographers learn to interpret photographs in that technical way because they want to understand and use that 'language' themselves just as musicians learn a more technical musical language than the layman needs. Social scientists who want to work with visual materials will have to learn to approach them in this more studious and time-consuming way.

Howard S. Becker

Top 3 Quotes & Sayings by Howard S. Becker

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