Synopses & Reviews
In 1963, Howard S. Becker gave a lecture about deviance, challenging the then-conventional definition that deviance was inherently criminal and abnormal and arguing that instead, deviance was better understood as a function of labeling.and#160; At the end of his lecture, a distinguished colleague standing at the back of the room, puffing a cigar, looked at Becker quizzically and asked, and#147;What about murder? Isnand#8217;t thatand#160;
reallyand#160;deviant?and#8221; It sounded like Becker had been backed into a corner. Becker, however, wasnand#8217;t defeated! Reasonable people, he countered, differ over whether certain killings are murder or justified homicide, and these differences vary depending on what kinds of people did the killing. Inand#160;
What About Mozart? What About Murder?,and#160;Becker uses this example, along with many others, to demonstrate the different ways to study society, one that uses carefully investigated, specific cases and another that relies on speculation and on what he calls and#147;killer questions,and#8221; aimed at taking down an opponent by citing invented cases.
Becker draws on a lifetime of sociological research and wisdom to show, in helpful detail, how to use a variety of kinds of cases to build sociological knowledge. With his trademark conversational flair and informal, personal perspective Becker provides a guide that researchers can use to produce general sociological knowledge through case studies. He champions research that has enough data to go beyond guesswork and urges researchers to avoid what he calls and#147;skeleton cases,and#8221; which use fictional stories that pose as scientific evidence. Using his long career as a backdrop, Becker delivers a winning book that will surely change the way scholars in many fields approach their research.
Review
andldquo;Beckerandrsquo;s gift for storytelling, his uncommon common sense, and his sly, contemporary eye make it clear that sociology, done right, is a liberal art, nimbly situated between philosophy and poetry. Nothing less than a handbook of how to think, What About Mozart? What About Murder?and#160;is a splendidly written and historically informed multicultural guide to forming questions that help make sense in and of our lives within a networked, global culture or, for that matter, a map of Paris or Chicago.andrdquo;
Review
andquot;Becker is one of the masters of modern social science and each of his works is a much welcome event, not least since they are written in a style that mixes deep insight with wisdom and wit. In this particular volume, which consists of a series of brilliant individual studies, Becker shows how his approach to case studies can help to move social science forward. This is very exciting, especially since Becker always tries to translate his insights into practical rules and suggestions for how to go about things in concrete research. This is definitely a book that social scientists from all disciplines and paradigms will want to study and learn from.andquot;
Review
and#8220;What about Becker? By word and deed, a unique scholarly life shows us the simplicity of how the best work gets done. This is a 'how to' for the ages.and#8221;
Review
"Though Beckerand#8217;s arena is the academy, what he writes of is of immediate practical use for anyone trying to make sense of the world in which he or she lives. He writes with wit and grace and the book is a delight to read"
Review
and#8220;This book is a delight. Howard Becker is that rarity: an academic writer who brings you into his presence, makes you comfortable, then entertains and educates you from first to last page. . . . It is no small measure of that ability to make analogical reasoning, or argument from cases, into such an engrossing read. Alongside his other essential writing on how to do research, writing it up and getting it submittable, this book is chock-full of good sense and practical advice, laid on a bed of excellent examples in a range of subject areas, and covered in a delicious sauce of personal reminiscence and just great gossip.and#160;. . . To all new sociologists, as well as oldies: buy this. You will not regret it.and#8221;
Review
Book of the Year
Review
andldquo;Both a jocular personal testament of faith and a window into Beckerandrsquo;s beliefs. His accomplishment is hard to summarize in a sentence or catchphrase, since heandrsquo;s resolutely anti-theoretical and suspicious of andlsquo;modelsandrsquo; that are too neat.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;Becker is a sociologist known as much for his dry wit as for his groundbreaking work examining deviancy, art and music.andrdquo;
Synopsis
Conventional social science looks for correlations between small variables (thought to be and#147;causaland#8221;) in a large collection of cases, isolating such items as age or gender or social class. Beckerand#8217;s alternative is to investigate one or more cases intensively. The aim is to discover new elements of a situation, new steps in a process of thought, which reveal the inner workings of and#147;black boxesand#8221; (input-output mechanisms). The challenge is to show how you get from the detailed knowledge of one case to more general ideas about how society, or some part of it, works. Beckerand#8217;s own now-classic research on careers, deviance, and art worlds supplies the cases he draws from. His work on art markets, to cite one, reveals the way in which social composition of art worlds leads to the hyping of certain styles and artists. Opiate addiction, another classic instance, has him comparing three cases (recreational drug use, prescription drug use, and chemical warfare and#147;administeringand#8221; of drugs), which untangles issues of causality though analysis of historical patterns of drug use. The goal of this approach is to push readers to form their own sociological world view, to understand social interactions as cases with larger significance, and also to produce an endless supply of researchable problems.
About the Author
Howard S. Beckerand#160;has made major contributions to the sociology of deviance, sociology of art, and sociology of music. He has also written extensively on the practice of sociology. He received a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, where he was also an instructor in sociology and social sciences. He became profesor of sociology at Northwestern University, where he taught for twenty-five years. When he retired from active teaching he was a professor of sociology and an adjunct professor of music at the University of Washington.and#160;He currently lives and works in San Francisco and Paris.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments and#160;
1 First Look
2 Whatand#8217;s Happening Elsewhere
and#160;Reasoning from a Case to the World
3 Reasoning from Analogy
4 Black Boxes
and#160;Using Cases to Study Input-Output Machi
5 Complicating and Combining Black Boxes
and#160;Where Is the Value in Art?
6 Imagining Cases
7 Where Do You Stop?
8 Ious, Promissory Notes, and Killer Questions
and#160;What About Mozart? What About Murder?
9 Last Words
and#160;
References
Index