+1 862 207 3288 Howard Becker is one of the most key and influential figures within the field of sociology, his work provided an introduction into the subject of deviant behaviour and thus enabling a shift in focus from crime to an explanation of deviance (Newburn, 2007). One of his most famous pieces of work in the discipline of sociology and the focus of this critical review, Outsiders (1963) explored explanations for deviance from a social perspective and went on to provide the foundations for the labelling theory movement (Slattery, 2003). The purpose of Outsiders was to analyse social interactions between groups of people and the processes involved in which particular groups of people or a particular behaviour comes to be labelled as deviant and the individual or group of individuals involved become outsiders (OBrien and Yar, 2008). It could be argued that the thoughts and ideas p…(short extract)
