Becker defined deviance as a social creation in which “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.” Becker grouped behaviour into four categories: falsely accused, conforming, pure deviant, and …

What is Howard Baker's famous definition of deviance?

“From this point of view,” Howard S. Becker writes: Deviance is not a quality of the act the person commits, but rather a consequence of the application by others of rules and sanctions to an “offender”.

What did Becker mean when he referred to deviant people as outsiders?

Becker’s most famous book, Outsiders (1963), viewed deviance as the cultural product of interactions between people whose occupations involved either committing crimes or catching criminals.