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I (Howard S. Becker, that
is) have created this page primarily to make things I've written and published
in obscure places available to anyone who wants them. From time to time
I'll add to what's here, as well as provide news on topics of interest
to people who know me or are interested in what I'm up to. I'll also include
links to other websites I think people might find interesting.
What's here now, first of all, are some papers I've published in the last several years. I've included information on where they were published, because there may be minor differences between what's here and what's in print and those of you who want exact quotations ought to look up the published versions. Feel free to download these and give them to whoever needs them. Then there's some news of what I've been up to and will be up to in the reasonably near future. Another section lists a few websites that deal with things I find interesting or important and would like to recommend to anyone who gets this far. Finally, there is a little gallery of photographs, some from my days as a musician, as well as some vintage portraits of a few of my sociological heroes, including Everett C. Hughes, Herbert Blumer, and Alfred Lindesmith. |
You can drop me a line via E-mail.
Sociologie, sociographie, Perec, and Passeron (to be published, in French, in a volume in honor of Jean-Claude Passeron)
"Talks About Teachers ," (with Shirah Hecht) Qualitaitve Sociology,20 (1997), pp. 565-79.
"Telling About Society" , pp. 121-135 in Howard S. Becker, Doing Things Together (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1986).
"Aesthetics and Truth," pp. 293-301 in Howard S. Becker, Doing Things Together (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1986).
"Letter to Charles Seeger," Ethnomusicology, 33 (Spring-Summer, 1989) pp. 275-85.
"Children's Conceptions of Money: Concepts and Social Organization," in Social Organization and Social Process, David Maines, ed., (Aldine Publishing Co.,1991). pp. 45-57.
"Theory: The Necessary Evil," pp. 218-2 in Theory and Concepts in Qualitative Research: Perspectives from the Field, David J. Flinders and Geoffrey E. Mills, eds., (New York: Teachers College Press, 1993).
"Confusion of Values," originally published in French as "La Confusion de Valeurs," pp. 11-28 in Pierre-Michel Menger and Jean-Claude Passeron, eds., L'art de la recherche: Melanges (Paris: La Documentation Française, 1994).
"Professionalism in Sociology: The Case of C. Wright Mills," pp. 175-87 in Ray Rist, editor,The Democratic Imagination: Dialogues on the Work of Irving Louis Horowitz (New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 1994).
"'Foi por acaso': Conceptualizing Coincidence, " Sociological Quarterly 35 (1994), 183-94. This essay also appears, in Portuguese, in Anuário Antropológico/93 (Brasilia, 1995), pp. 155-173.
"American Popular Song," pp. 9-18 in Ton Bevers, ed., Artists--Dealers-- Consumers: On the Social World of Art (Hilversum: Verloren, 1994).
"Visual Sociology, Documentary Photography, and Photojournalism: It's Almost All a Matter of Context," Visual Sociology 10 (1-2), 5-14.
"The Power of Inertia," Qualitative Sociology (18), 301-309.
"The Epistemology of Qualitative Research," in Richard Jessor, Anne Colby, and Richard Schweder, eds., Essays on Ethnography and Human Development (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996 ), pp. 53-71.
"Hypertext Fiction," pp. 67-81 in M. Lourdes Lima dos Santos, Cultura & Economia (Lisbon: Edicões do Instituto de Ciências Sociais, 1995), and in Mark Bernstein, ed., How to Read a Hypertext (Cambridge: Eastgate, forthcoming).in Mark Bernstein, ed., How to Read a Hypertext (Cambridge: Eastgate, forthcoming).
" Making the Grade Revisited." This essay appeared as the introduction to a new printing of Howard S. Becker, Blanche Geer, and Everett C. Hughes, Making the Grade:The Academic Side of College Life (Transaction, Inc.: New Brunswick, 1995), pp. xii-xx.
"How I Learned What a Crock Was," Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 22 (April, 1993), 28-35.
Some people have shown an interest in my earlier work, so I've added a copy of my vita here, which has a pretty complete list with the necessary bibliographical information.
After a lot of delay, more years than I care to think, I finished Tricks of the Trade: How to Think About Your Research While You're Doing It, and it has now been published by the University of Chicago Press, and is now available. I have always thought of the book they published ten years ago, Writing for Social Scientists as my "writing" book. I think of this one as my "thinking" book. (You can get some information about it at the University of Chicago Press website.) And you can read the entire first chapter at their site as well.
I taught in the Sociology Department of the University of California in Santa Barbara last winter (2000) and spent some of the time there working on a book that will be called "Telling About Society," which will deal with all the different ways people have used to communicate what they thought they knew about society, everything from novels and plays to mathematical models. You can get an idea of the book from the syllabus and list of readings from a course of that name I have taught a couple of times.
We are now living full-time in San Francisco, except for a lot of trips to Paris. I got an honorary degree from the Université Pierre Mendes-France, which is part of the Université de Grenoble in November, 1999, after agreeing that I would play the piano at the ceremony. I said I would if they hired a bass player for me and they did; Benoit and I tore the place up for half an hour. Another very welcome feature of this last visit was the publication of Propos sur l'art,a collection of translations of some of my papers on the sociology of art. We will be in Paris again in April and May, celebrating, among other things, my election to the Board of Directors of the Entretiens Franklin.
Here are the addresses of a few other sites I think are interesting.
Dianne Hagaman is a photographer and writer (to whom I happen to be married). If you click here you'll see a selection of her work.
Michael Joyce, is a pioneer of hypertext fiction, and author of the program you can write hypertexts with, called Storyspace.
Eastgate Systems provides a home for writers and lovers of hypertext, and their home page tells you all about hypertext, some major authors, current events in that world, and so on.
Georges Perec, a French novelist, wrote (among other wonderful books) Life A User's Manual. Much of his work is available in English and, believe me, is worth reading.
The Kronos Quartet play nothing but modern music, a lot of it written for them. I especially liked their recording of Thelonius Monk's music.
I have always liked (not everyone does) the novels and stories of P. G. Wodehouse, who invented Jeeves, Bertie Wooster, and others. He has some loyal fans, and you might get a kick out of their seriousness.
Many people know that I used to play the piano for a living, in taverns, for dances, weddings, bar mitzvas, Safeway employees Christmas parties, and so on. Here is a picture of the Bobby Laine Trio, circa 1950 (Bobby Laine, tenor; Dominic Jaconetti, drums,; Howie Becker, piano), performing at the 504 Club, which was located at 504 W. 63rd St. in Chicago.
That's a sample. You can find more pictures by following this link.
[This page was last updated 04/08/00]
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València 15th September 2000
