<P> With other sociologists of his time, Lemert saw how all deviant acts are social acts, a result of the cooperation of society . In studying drug addiction, Lemert observed a very powerful and subtle force at work . Besides the physical addiction to the drug and all the economic and social disruptions it caused, there was an intensely intellectual process at work concerning one's own identity and the justification for the behavior: "I do these things because I am this way ." </P> <P> There might be certain subjective and personal motives that might first lead a person to drink or shoplift . But the activity itself tells us little about the person's self - image or its relationship to the activity . Lemert writes: "His acts are repeated and organized subjectively and transformed into active roles and become the social criteria for assigning status...When a person begins to employ his deviant behavior or a role based on it as a means of defense, attack, or adjustment to the overt and covert problems created by the consequent societal reaction to him, his deviation is secondary". </P> <P> While it was Lemert who introduced the key concepts of labeling theory, it was Howard Becker who became their successor . He first began describing the process of how a person adopts a deviant role in a study of dance musicians, with whom he once worked . He later studied the identity formation of marijuana smokers . This study was the basis of his Outsiders published in 1963 . This work became the manifesto of the labeling theory movement among sociologists . In his opening, Becker writes: </P> <Dl> <Dd> "...social groups create deviance by making rules whose infraction creates deviance, and by applying those rules to particular people and labeling them as outsiders . From this point of view, deviance is not a quality of the act the person commits, but rather a consequence of the application by other of rules and sanctions to an' offender .' The deviant is one to whom that label has been successfully applied; deviant behavior is behavior that people so label ." </Dd> </Dl>

Describe an example of labeling that you are personally familiar with