Norman Denzin

University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign | UIUC · Department of Sociology

Here, I outline a performative approach to the politicized public sphere specifically drawing on Moises Kaufman’s Laramie Project, ¹ Saldaña’s call for a critical ethnotheatre that engages key moments in a culture’s history, and Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed.

We need new ways of making the everyday world visible through disruptive empirical methodologies that privilege social justice and utopian acts of critical imagination.

Critical qualitative scholarship offers humble grounds and many unforeseen possibilities to seek and promote justice, critical global engagement, and diverse epistemologies. This dialogical and interactive paper is based on a panel session at the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry that highlighted diverse areas of critical qualitative in...

A four-act historical ethnodrama critiques the Paris Disneyland, Buffalo Bill Wild West Show and its use of Native Americans as re-enactors of a wild west that never was. The play asks if new stories of the West can be performed and if so how. I contest the transnational narrative that uses Native Americans as vehicles for telling stories about the...

The global qualitative research community faces a number of challenges that can be addressed by deploying a critical framework modeled after the work of C. W. Mills and Paulo Freire.

The reader is asked to imagine a world without data, a world without method, a world without a hegemonic politics of evidence., a world where no one counts, a world without end.

A critical reading of George Catlin’s 19th century portraits of Native Americans is offered. Catlin’s Traveling Indian Gallery distorted the culture voices and customs of his subjects. My reading is a form of memory-making, but in a sense it is no more authentic than Catlin’s. I attempt a form of self-critique which acknowledges and disturbs this f...

This article focuses on the intersection of two memories. Mother dressed as a cowgirl, and riding my horse, who is named Sunny. It is a warm, sunny, Sunday afternoon in 1951, and I am ten years old. Two years later I am watching Shane with my father. In four years he will disappear from my life. I waited, night after night for him to come back, as...

Within this article, the authors critically introduce and interrogate the ongoing crisis/scandal at Penn State University within the intersecting vectors of institutional violence, the commodification of higher education, media coverage of the event and its aftermath, spaces of resistance, and the complicated legacy of Joe Paterno. Additionally, an...

A third way of conceptualizing mixed methods research is proposed, one based on critical interpretive methodologies.

The author reads his family history through letters found in a box of books.

This three-act historical ethnodrama rereads the discourse surrounding Custer's Last Stand, arguably the most written-about military event in American history. It compares and contrasts First Nation oral history accounts, official military records, and select painterly representations of the “Battle of Little Bighorn.” It asks if there was a real “...

This article examines the context of political life in the United States during the Barack Obama administration, especially as related to right-wing assaults on a progressive political agenda. It also presents an argument for a new performative cultural politics; that is, an interventionist project informed by and committed to acts of activism in t...

I reread the 50-year-old history of the qualitative inquiry that calls for triangulation and mixed methods. I briefly visit the disputes within the mixed methods community asking how did we get to where we are today, the period of mixed-multiple-methods advocacy, and Teddlie and Tashakkori's third methodological moment.

Grounded theory (GT): the writing is direct, and immediate, subversive, no big words. To wit: The grounded theorist thinks abstractly, critically, flexibly … Theory is the basis for social action. (Strauss and Corbin 1998:7, 9–11) The special emphasis is on how to develop theory through qualitative analysis, through codes, memos, sequences, theoret...

Qualitative researchers are increasingly being called upon to become human rights advocates, to help individuals and communities honor the sanctity of life, and to promote the core values of privacy, justice, freedom, peace, and human dignity. In this volume of plenary papers from the Fifth International of Qualitative Inquiry in 2009, leading qual...

Qualitative researchers are increasingly being called upon to become human rights advocates, to help individuals and communities honor the sanctity of life, and to promote the core values of privacy, justice, freedom, peace, and human dignity. In this volume of plenary papers from the Fifth International of Qualitative Inquiry in 2009, leading qual...

This short one-act play addresses the criticisms of postmodern ethnography by Hammersely and others. It suggests that much of the criticism reflects misinterpretations of the new work. Critics are challenged to become more open-minded in their evaluations of alternative ways of doing critical qualitative inquiry.

Some think of ethnography as a journey, others see it as a destination. With Ellis and Bochner, I want an autoethnography that shows struggle, passion, an embodied life that embraces a social justice agenda. Critics want to tame ethnography, categorize it, place it under the control of reason and logic. I want an unruly ethnography fractured, a mos...

The controversies surrounding the evidence-based research movement are reviewed from a critical pedagogy framework. Standards for assessing quality are forms of interpretive practice that enact a politics of evidence and truth. Moral and ethical criteria for judging qualitative research are reviewed.

In increasing numbers, qualitative researchers are leaving their ivory tower perches and entering the fray, focusing their research and actions on the promotion of social justice. In this tightly edited volume of original articles stemming from the 2008 International Congress on Qualitative Inquiry, leading figures in qualitative research demonstra...

I offer a critical reading of the most famous painting of Yellowstone Park, Thomas Moran's (1872) The Grand Canyon of the YelloWstone (GCY). This painting functions as the paradigmatic image of the Park and the commodification of a specific site within the Park — namely, the canyon and falls of the Yellowstone River. I present a four-act performanc...

I want to read the controversies and scandals surrounding Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) within a critical pedagogical, discourse. Ethics are pedagogies of practice. IRBs are institutional apparatuses that regulate a particular form of ethical conduct, a form that may be no longer workable in a transdisciplinary, global, and postcolonial world....

This paper re‐engages the paradigm wars of the 1980s, discussing their relevance in the current historical moment. It extends Egon Guba’s call for dialogue across paradigm communities. Ten theses and three agenda items are advanced.Let us engage in the paradigm wars. Let us defend ourselves against those who would impose their modern notions of sci...

This script comes from an edited transcript of a session titled “Talking and Thinking About Qualitative Research,” which was part of the 2006 International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry, held at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign on May 4-6, 2006. This special session featured scholars informally responding to questions about their pe...

Este trabajo se refiere a un vínculo particular entre la universidad y la sociedad: el vínculo del complejo metodología/problemas sociales/ políticas públicas con la posibilidad de cambio con justicia social, en donde el resultado de los debates académico-metodológicos en relación con la investigación cualitativa y cuantitativa, tiene consecuencias...

Presented to the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction in Montreal, Canada, on August 7, 2006, this performance text is a critique of the Bush administration and its reliance on science, or evidence-based models of inquiry (SBR). SBR raises issues concerning the politics of truth and evidence. These issues intersect with the ways in which a...

Drawing on Walter Benjamin's concept of history as literary montage, "Memory: Lewis and Clark in Yellowstone, circa 2004" interrogates the place of memory in the bicentennial celebrations of the Lewis and Clark expedition of 1804–06. Quoting from historical documents, I attempt to crack the racist facade that surrounds Lewis and Clark and the place...

Reading forward from the recently released secret Downing Street Memos, to the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act, in this performance text I critique the Bush Administration and its reliance on science, or evidence-based models of inquiry (SBR). SBR raises issues concerning the politics of truth and evidence. These issues intersect with the ways in whi...

This article offers a critical reading of C. Wright Mills's The Sociological Imagination (1959). Such a reading reveals the need to reassess the basis, practice, purpose, and impact of sociology. Accordingly, interpretive materials drawn from stories about and by alcoholics and a new cultural grouping, Adult Children of Alcoholics, are used to illu...

The works of Cooley, Mead, and Piaget on the genesis and emergence of self in early childhood are examined in light of recent research in developmental linguistics and assessed in terms of the author's own participant observation studies in preschools. Central to the emergence of self is the acquisition of language which is conceptualized as a conv...

This article examines the phenomenon of first-time throughness, which speaks to how social events are experienced in real, interactional time. Multiple readings of the made-for-television film Under the Influence (Green 1986), are presented. These readings are used as evidence to support the conclusion that the lived orderlines of everyday life res...

Classical and contemporary theories of childhood play are reviewed and evaluated. A symbolic interactionist conception of play, games, work, and socialization is offered. Naturalistic data drawn from the observation of children ages three to eight years are presented to support a processual model of socialization and interaction in early childhood.

Two readings, one realistic, the other subversive, of Tender Mercies, a contemporary “alcoholism” film, are offered. This case study of a cultural text speaks to the problem of how a society represents itself to its members through its depictions of everyday life. It is argued that sociologists have been slow to utilize cultural representations of...

This is a call for the international community of qualitative researchers to address the implications of the attempt by federal governments to regulate scientific inquiry by defining what is good science. Around the globe governments are attempting to enforce biomedical, evidence-based models of evidence. These efforts must be resisted by critical,...

Aiming to begin research on the Carbon Dating of Indigenous Artifacts. With these findings, there is the hope of aiding in Reconciliation for the Constitution in strong standing with the First Nations People.

"Remembering to Forget" enacts a critical cultural politics concerning the Lewis and Clark expedition of 1804-1806, Lewis and Clark's relations with Native Americans in the greater Yellowstone region, and the bicentennial commemoration of that presence in 2003 and 2004. I examine the place of Lewis and Clark in our national imagination. This is a f...

Criteria for evaluating experimental ethnographic texts are reviewed. Subversive, resistance narratives are foregrounded. While the focus is primarily on North American work, scholarship by non-American scholars is reviewed as well, including the arguments by indigenous scholars.

This experimental, layered, mixed-genre narrative folds my biographical experiences into a critical reading of Wallace Stegner's autobiographical account of his childhood. This reading allows me to discuss three versions of the midcentury white male middle-class American dream. I compare Stegner's father to my father and my grandfather, as I discus...

This article presents a performance-based approach to doing symbolic interactionist inquiry. After a discussion of the vocabulary of performance, I examine the relationship among performance, pedagogy, aesthetics, and politics, including the move to performance (auto) ethnography.

Building on earlier arguments, I propose a civic, publicly responsable [auto] ethnography that addresses the central issues of self, race, gender, class, society, and democracy. I begin with pedagogies of hope and the sociological and ethnographic imaginations. I turn then to the ethnographer and cultural studies, reviewing several models of critic...

“The claim that all the world’s a stage is sufficiently commonplace for readers to be familiar with its limitations and tolerant of its presentation.” (Goffman 1959, 72, 254) “Given that the logic of privatization....now odiously shapes archetypes of citizenship, [and] manages our perceptions of what constitute the ‘good society’....it stands to r...

This experimental, layered, mixed-genre narrative folds my biographical experiences into a critical reading of a cultural performance involving cowboys and Indians in a small Montana town in summer 2000. Informed by critical race theory and poststructuralism, this narrative attempts to deconstruct racial stereotypes associated with Native Americans...

Ces articles refletent l'etat d'esprit de chercheurs en sciences sociales au lendemain des evenements du 11 septembre 2001. Les AA. livrent ici leurs sentiments et s'interrogent sur leur role de chercheur dans l'optique de la connaissance de l'autre et de l'aprehension du monde contemporain

My intentions in this article are fourfold: (1) to show how the discourses of qualitative inquiry and cultural studies in the seventh moment can be put to critical advantage by social work researchers; (2) to discuss the cultural studies assumptions that define a critical social work research agenda; (3) to offer a set of interpretive, methodologic...

My intentions in this essay are fivefold: (1) to show how the discourses of qualitative inquiry and cultural studies in the seventh moment can be put to critical advantage by consumer researchers; (2) to discuss the cultural studies assumptions that define a consumer research agenda; (3) to offer a set of interpretive, methodological, and ethical c...

The reflexive interview is located within the structures of the cinematic-interview society. The concepts of performance interview, narrative collage, postmodern interview, performative writing and ethnodrama are developed. The work of Anna Deavere Smith is also discussed.

This article proposes that qualitative, interpretive writing be assessed in terms of its ability to advance the promises of radical democractic racial justice embodied in the post-civil rights, Chicana/Chicano and Black Arts Aesthetic movements. A set of interpretive practices connected to an aesthetics of color is presented.

It is a painful story, this tale of the conflicted, strained, at times deceitful relationship between Hans Gerth and C. Wright Mills. The story begins in 1940, with Mills's entry into the doctoral program in sociology at Wisconsin, and effectively ends with Mills's death in 1962. However, the central focus is on the thirteen-year collaboration betw...

This is an experimental, mixed-genre narrative, combining autoethnography with other evocative writing forms, including narratives of the self. Using the techniques of fiction, I tell a story about myself and my experiences with nature, the sacred, and a small Montana river named Rock Creek. Kittridge asks for narratives that embed the self in stor...

Michael Jackson. Minima Ethnographica: Intersubjectivity and the Anthropological Project. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. 242 pp.

Without Abstract

William Foote Whyte's defense of the methodology used in Street Corner Society is used as an occasion to examine the work of the New Journalists who struggled to redefine the fact-fiction distinction in ethnographic and journalistic discourse. The relevance of this discourse for contemporary qualitative inquiry is discussed.

Pragmatism and Social Theory, by Hans Joas.

An examination of thefemine gaze, as given in two recent mainstream Hollywood films (Black Widow, Fatal Attraction), is presented. How this gaze and its I understandings complement a feminist-based cultural studies project is discussed.

Continual Permutations of Action, by Anselm L. Strauss.

First there was James, then Peirce and Mead, and in between and before (and after) there was Dewey, then Blumer, and now Strauss. Giants all, pioneers, founding fathers of American pragmatism and that unique American sociology called symbolic interactionism. They all come together in this brilliant, but awkwardly titled summa, a work which will mus...

Poststructural theory creates a crisis of representation and legitimation for qualitative research in the human disciplines. The direct link between text and experience is now problematic. This is the crisis of representation. The crisis of legitimation involves a reconceptualization of the criteria that researchers use for evaluating interpretive...

A critical reading of the Oriental sleuth in Hollywood films, focusing on the Charlie Chan series, is offered. The Chan series is contrasted to the 1981 Wayne Wang film, Chan Is Missing. These texts are fitted into a cultural studies perspective which criticizes the voyeuristic, investigative project of the traditional Asian eye.