Howard S. Becker Quote

There is little disagreement about what constitutes a healthy state of the organism. But there is much less agreement when one uses the notion of pathology analogically, to describe kinds of behavior that are regarded as deviant. For people do not agree on what constitutes healthy behavior... The medical metaphor limits what we can see much as the statistical view does. It accepts the lay judgment of something as deviant and, by use of analogy, locates its source within the individual, thus preventing us from seeing the judgment itself as a crucial part of the phenomenon.


p. 5-6. - Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance (1963)


There is little disagreement about what constitutes a healthy state of the organism. But there is much less agreement when one uses the notion of...

There is little disagreement about what constitutes a healthy state of the organism. But there is much less agreement when one uses the notion of...

There is little disagreement about what constitutes a healthy state of the organism. But there is much less agreement when one uses the notion of...

There is little disagreement about what constitutes a healthy state of the organism. But there is much less agreement when one uses the notion of...