Author: Howard Paul BeckerPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 152
Book Description
Howard Becker on Education
Author: Howard Paul BeckerPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 152
Book Description
Evidence
Author: Howard S. BeckerPublisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022646637X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 234
Book Description
Howard S. Becker is a master of his discipline. His reputation as a teacher, as well as a sociologist, is supported by his best-selling quartet of sociological guidebooks: Writing for Social Scientists, Tricks of the Trade, Telling About Society, and What About Mozart? What About Murder? It turns out that the master sociologist has yet one more trick up his sleeve—a fifth guidebook, Evidence. Becker has for seventy years been mulling over the problem of evidence. He argues that social scientists don’t take questions about the usefulness of their data as evidence for their ideas seriously enough. For example, researchers have long used the occupation of a person’s father as evidence of the family’s social class, but studies have shown this to be a flawed measure—for one thing, a lot of people answer that question too vaguely to make the reasoning plausible. The book is filled with examples like this, and Becker uses them to expose a series of errors, suggesting ways to avoid them, or even to turn them into research topics in their own right. He argues strongly that because no data-gathering method produces totally reliable information, a big part of the research job consists of getting rid of error. Readers will find Becker’s newest guidebook a valuable tool, useful for social scientists of every variety.
Outsiders
Author: Howard S. BeckerPublisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 143913636X
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 230
Book Description
One of the most groundbreaking sociology texts of the mid-20th century, Howard S. Becker’s Outsiders is a thorough exploration of social deviance and how it can be addressed in an understanding and helpful manner. A compulsively readable and thoroughly researched exploration of social deviance and the application of what is known as "labeling theory" to the studies of deviance. With particular research into drug culture, Outsiders analyzes unconventional individuals and their place in normal society.
What About Mozart? What About Murder?
Author: Howard S. BeckerPublisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022616652X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 215
Book Description
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. 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, “What about murder? Isn’t that really deviant?” It sounded like Becker had been backed into a corner. Becker, however, wasn’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. In What About Mozart? What About Murder?, 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 “killer questions,” 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 “skeleton cases,” 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.
Sociological Work
Author: Howard Saul BeckerPublisher: Transaction Publishers
ISBN: 1412834708
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 371
Book Description
The papers in this volume, including two important and previously unpublished essays on sociological method, represent most of Howard Beckers work of the past twenty years that has not appeared in book form. They reflect the way of thinking about society and how to study it that has established Professor Beckers place among the leading sociologists of our time. Th e result is an important statement of the distinctive theoretical and methodological views associated with the "Chicago School" of sociology, reflecting a deep concern with the study at first hand of the processes and human consequences of collective action and interaction. The first part of the book treats problems of method as problems of social interaction and lists a series of research problems, which require analytic attention-gaining access to research sites, choosing a theoretical framework within which to approach a group or community, avoiding error, and developing hypotheses. They also exemplify this approach by analyzing the interactional aspects of definition, proof with qualitative evidence, bias, and the value commitments of sociology. Part Two illustrates Professor Beckers approach through full reports on two of his major research projects. Part Th ree contains four theoretical statements on how people change (a sociological approach to what psychologists call "personality"), and Part Four makes important contributions to the study of deviance. The papers here ask what we can learn about American society from looking at its common forms of deviance and illustrate the need to study deviance as part of the general study of society, not as an isolated specialty.
Writing for Social Scientists
Author: Howard S. BeckerPublisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226041379
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 424
Book Description
Students and researchers all write under pressure, and those pressures—most lamentably, the desire to impress your audience rather than to communicate with them—often lead to pretentious prose, academic posturing, and, not infrequently, writer’s block. Sociologist Howard S. Becker has written the classic book on how to conquer these pressures and simply write. First published nearly twenty years ago, Writing for Social Scientists has become a lifesaver for writers in all fields, from beginning students to published authors. Becker’s message is clear: in order to learn how to write, take a deep breath and then begin writing. Revise. Repeat. It is not always an easy process, as Becker wryly relates. Decades of teaching, researching, and writing have given him plenty of material, and Becker neatly exposes the foibles of academia and its “publish or perish” atmosphere. Wordiness, the passive voice, inserting a “the way in which” when a simple “how” will do—all these mechanisms are a part of the social structure of academic writing. By shrugging off such impediments—or at the very least, putting them aside for a few hours—we can reform our work habits and start writing lucidly without worrying about grades, peer approval, or the “literature.” In this new edition, Becker takes account of major changes in the computer tools available to writers today, and also substantially expands his analysis of how academic institutions create problems for them. As competition in academia grows increasingly heated, Writing for Social Scientists will provide solace to a new generation of frazzled, would-be writers.
Boys in White
Author: Howard Saul BeckerPublisher: Transaction Publishers
ISBN: 1412818869
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 472
Book Description
The transition from young layman aspiring to be a physician to the young physician skilled in technique and confident in his dealings with patients is slow and halting. To study medicine is generally rated one of the major educational ordeals of American youth. The difficulty of this process and how medical students feel about their training, their doctor-teachers, and the profession they are entering is the target of this study. Now regarded as a classic, Boys in White is of vital interest to medical educators and sociologists. By daily interviews and observations in classes, wards, laboratories, and operating theaters, the team of sociologists who carried out this firsthand research have not only captured the worries, cynicism, and basic idealism of medical studentsâthey have also documented many other realities of medical education in relation to society. With some sixty tables and illustrations, the book is a major experiment in analyzing and presenting qualitative data.
Making the Grade
Author: Howard S. BeckerPublisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351507648
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 171
Book Description
Based on three years of detailed anthropological observation, this account of undergraduate culture portrays students' academic relations to faculty and administration as one of subjection. With rare intervals in crisis moments, student life has always been dominated by grades and grade point averages. The authors of Making the Grade maintain that, though it has taken different forms from tune to time, the emphasis on grades has persisted in academic life. From this premise they argue that the social organization giving rise to this emphasis has remained remarkably stable throughout the century. Becker, Geer, and Hughes discuss various aspects of college life and examine the degree of autonomy students have over each facet of their lives. Students negotiate with authorities the conditions of campus political and organizational life--the student government, independent student organizations, and the student newspaper--and preserve substantial areas of autonomous action for themselves. Those same authorities leave them to run such aspects of their private lives as friendships and dating as they wish. But, when it comes to academic matters, students are subject to the decisions of college faculties and administrators. Becker deals with this continuing lack of autonomy in student life in his new introduction. He also examines new phenomena, such as the impact of -grade inflation- and how the world of real adult work has increasingly made professional and technical expertise, in addition to high grades, the necessary condition for success. Making the Grade continues to be an unparalleled contribution to the studies of academics, students, and college life. It will be of interest to university administrators, professors, students, and sociologists.
Doing Things Together
Author: Howard Saul BeckerPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 360
Book Description
Art Worlds
Author: Howard Saul BeckerPublisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520043862
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 414
Book Description