An expert in modern sociology diesFor an American Howard Baker, best known for his analysis of dissociation, has died at the age of 95, his wife Diane Hagaman announced Thursday.

“How he passed away peacefully on August 16 at his home in San Francisco, California,” said photographer Diane Hagaman.

In his most famous work, Outsiders (1963), Howard redefined deviance as a result of social interaction, where the actions of the individual characterize him as disobedient, but the view of others.

Howard Baker is also a musician. “I’ve always wanted to be a pianist,” he told The New Yorker in an earlier 2015 interview.

Although he was a professor at the prestigious Northwestern University near Chicago, his work was of particular interest in France, which he visited frequently in the latter stages of his life.

“We have left behind a great sociologist,” wrote the Association of French Sociologists on the X website.

After completing his studies in Chicago, Baker realized that he could simultaneously work as a researcher and be involved in the music industry. Jazz clubs were his first field of study.

His observations of the jazz industry, then considered a bubble of eccentrics and pot smokers, led him to conclude that the most socially unintegrated individuals were actually the most integrated into the subgroup they belonged to. Baker also wrote about the art world.

France 24/AFP