Blackwell Reference Online

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A moral entrepreneur is an individual, group, or formal organization that takes on the responsibility of persuading society to develop or to enforce rules that are consistent with its own ardently held moral beliefs. Moral entrepreneurs may act as rule creators by crusading for the passage of rules, laws, and policies against behaviors they find abhorrent, or as rule enforcers by administering and implementing them. Although these are different and distinct roles, the effect of moral entrepreneurship, according to Howard Becker who coined the term, is the formation of a new class of outsiders whose behavior now violates these newly minted regulations and therefore is subject to the opprobrious label of “deviant.”In Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance (1963), Becker elaborates on the concept of moral entrepreneurs through a case study of US marijuana laws. He identifies the Federal Bureau of Narcotics as the rule creator that mobilized its considerable resources to initiate an unrelenting moral crusade against marijuana use. Using rhetoric that resonated with hegemonic moral standards, the Bureau saturated the news media and popular culture with horror stories about the moral and social threats posed by those who violated these imperatives by smoking marijuana. As a rule creator, the Bureau provided the enterprise that culminated in the passage of the 1937 Marijuana Tax ... log in or subscribe to read full text