Moral entrepreneur
Definition
Becker's term for an individual or group that campaigns to create or enforce moral rules, defining what will count as deviant and pressing institutions to apply the label. Rule creation and rule enforcement are seen as political acts, not neutral responses to harm.
Related terms
- Deviant career
- Becker's concept describing how an individual moves sequentially through stages of deviance, from initial rule-breaking through labelling and eventually into immersion in...
- Primary deviance
- Rule-breaking behaviour that precedes or occurs without official labelling. Lemert argued that primary deviance is common and does not in itself alter...
- Secondary deviance
- Deviant behaviour that arises as an adaptation to the social reaction to primary deviance. Once labelled, a person restructures their identity and...
- Self-fulfilling prophecy
- A situation in which a definition, though originally inaccurate or arbitrary, provokes behaviour that makes it accurate. In labelling theory, treating someone...
- Stigma
- Goffman's term for a deeply discrediting attribute that reduces the bearer to a spoiled identity in others' eyes. A criminal conviction functions...
Explained in
- Labelling Theory and Social ReactionBecker's term for an individual or group that campaigns to create or enforce moral rules, defining what will count as deviant and pressing institutions to appl...