DENZIN, Norman K(ent) 1941-

PERSONAL: Born March 24, 1941, in Iowa City, IA; son of Kenneth F. (a naval captain) and Betty Townsley (maiden name, Campbell) Denzin; married Katherine E. Ryan; children: Johanna, Rachel, Nathan. Education: University of Iowa, A.B., 1963, Ph.D., 1966. Hobbies and other interests: Trout fishing, reading mystery novels, jazz.

ADDRESSES: Home—107 South Prospect Ave., Champaign, IL 61820-4624. Office—Institute of Communication Research, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, assistant professor of sociology, 1966-69; University of California, Berkeley, assistant professor of sociology, 1969-71; University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, associate professor, 1971-73, professor of sociology, 1973-80, College of Communications, research communications scholar, distinguished professor of sociology, criticism and interpretive theory professor, 1981-94, distinguished research professor of communications, 1995—. Referee on grant applications, National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities, 1970—.

MEMBER: International Sociological Association (secretary-treasurer of social psychology section, 1978-80), American Anthropological Association, American Psychological Association, American Association for Public Opinion Research, Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction (vice president, 1975-76; president, 1993-95), Society for the Sociological Study of Social Problems, Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, Society for the Study of Applied Anthropology, Pacific Sociological Society, Midwest Sociological Society (president, 1987-89).

AWARDS, HONORS: Charles Horton Cooley Award, 1987; George Herbert Mead Award, 1997.

WRITINGS:

The Research Act: A Theoretical Introduction to Sociological Methods, Aldine (Hawthorne, NY), 1970, 3rd edition, Prentice-Hall (Englewood Cliffs, NJ), 1989.

(With others) Social Relationships, Aldine (Hawthorne, NY), 1970.

(With Alfred R. Lindesmith and A. R. Strauss) Readings in Social Psychology, 2nd edition (Denzin was not associated with previous edition), Holt (New York, NY), 1975, 8th edition, Sage Publications (Beverly Hills, CA), 1997.

Childhood Socialization, Jossey-Bass (San Francisco, CA), 1977.

On Understanding Emotion, Jossey-Bass (San Francisco, CA), 1984.

The Alcoholic Self, Sage Publications (Newbury Park, CA), 1987.

The Recovering Alcoholic, Sage Publications (Newbury Park, CA), 1987.

Treating Alcoholism: An Alcoholics Anonymous Approach, Sage Publications (Newbury Park, CA), 1987.

(With Alfred R. Lindesmith and A. R. Strauss) Social Psychology, 6th edition (Denzin was not associated with previous editions), Prentice-Hall (Englewood Cliffs, NJ), 1988.

Interpretive Interactionism, Sage Publications (Newbury Park, CA), 1989, 2nd edition, 2001.

Interpretive Biography, Sage Publications (Newbury Park, CA), 1989.

Hollywood Shot by Shot: Alcoholism in American Cinema, A. de Gruyter (New York, NY), 1991.

Images of Postmodern Society: Social Theory and Contemporary Cinema, Sage Publications (Newbury Park, CA), 1991.

Symbolic Interactionism and Cultural Studies: The Politics of Interpretation, Blackwell (Oxford, England), 1992.

The Alcoholic Society: Addiction and Recovery of the Self, Transaction (New Brunswick, NJ), 1993.

The Cinematic Society: The Voyeur's Gaze, Sage Publications (Thousand Oaks, CA), 1995.

Interpretive Ethnography: Ethnographic Practices for the 21st Century, Sage Publications (Thousand Oaks, CA), 1997.

(With others) Social Psychology, Sage Publications (Thousand Oaks, CA), 1999.

Reading Race: Hollywood and the Cinema of Racial Violence, Sage Publications (Thousand Oaks, CA), 2002.

Performance Ethnography: Critical Pedagogy and the Politics of Culture, Sage (Thousand Oaks, CA), 2003.

EDITOR

(And contributor, with Stephen P. Spitzer) The Mental Patient: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance, McGraw-Hill (New York, NY), 1968.

(And contributor) Sociological Methods: A Source-book, Aldine (Hawthorne, NY), 1970, 2nd edition, McGraw-Hill (New York, NY), 1977.

(And contributor) The Values of Social Science, Aldine (Hawthorne, NY), 1970, 2nd edition, Dutton (New York, NY), 1973.

Children and Their Caretakers, Dutton (New York, NY), 1973.

Studies in Symbolic Interaction: A Research Annual, JAI Press (Greenwich, CT), 1978—.

(With Yvonna S. Lincoln) Handbook of Qualitative Research, Sage Publications (Newbury Park, CA), 1994, 2nd edition, 2000.

(With Yvonna S. Lincoln) Collecting and Interpreting Qualitative Materials, Sage Publications (Thousand Oaks, CA), 1998, 2nd edition, 2003.

(With Yvonna S. Lincoln) The Landscape of Qualitative Research: Theories and Issues, Sage Publications (Thousand Oaks, CA), 1998, 2nd edition, 2003.

(With Yvonna S. Lincoln) Strategies of Qualitative Inquiry, Sage Publications (Thousand Oaks, CA), 1998, 2nd edition, 2003.

(With Yvonna S. Lincoln) The American Tradition in Qualitative Research, Sage Publications (London, England; Thousand Oaks, CA), 2001.

(With Yvonna S. Lincoln) The Qualitative Inquiry Reader, Sage Publications (Thousand Oaks, CA), 2002.

(With Yvonna S. Lincoln) Turning Points on Qualitative Research: Tying Knots in a Handkerchief, AltaMira Press (Walnut Creek, CA), 2003.

(With Yvonna S. Lincoln) 9-11 in American Culture, AltaMira Press (Walnut Creek, CA), 2003.

Also author of Performance Narratives, 1997. Contributor to numerous periodicals, including Social Forces, Journal of Health and Social Behavior, Mental Hygiene, Sociological Quarterly, Social Problems, American Sociological Review, American Sociologist, American Journal of Sociology, Word, Quest, and Slavic Review. Trans-action, special issue editor, June-July, 1971; Sociological Quarterly, associate editor, 1972-82, editor, 1992—; Urban Life, associate editor, 1972—; Contemporary Sociology, associate editor, 1978-81; Qualitative Inquiry, coeditor, 1994—; Cultural Studies: A Research Annual, editor, 1995—; American Journal of Sociology, editorial referee.

SIDELIGHTS: Noted sociologist and educator Norman K. Denzin is the author or editor of more than fifty books and a contributor to dozens of professional journals. Several of his books are concerned with alcoholism and American culture, especially cinema, which he also writes about in relation to race and violence. Denzin and coeditor Yvonna S. Lincoln have edited several volumes on the value of qualitative research in sociology.

Denzin once told CA: "[My] basic position is that human conduct can only be understood by grasping the historical and cultural perspectives, languages and points of view of those we study. Instrumental works have been by G. H. Mead, C. H. Cooley, H. Blumer, C. Peirce, W. James, J. Dewey, A. Smith, E. Husserl, M. Scheler, S. Freud, Karl Marx, Martin Heidegger, and Jean-Paul Sartre. [The] basic question guiding my work is: How is meaning constructed and lived in the lives of ordinary people and how may we, as interpretive scholars, ground our understandings in the spoken prose of the people we study?"

Such are the questions answered by The Handbook of Qualitative Research. Because qualitative research—as opposed to the facts and figures of quantitative research—has been documented from the time of ancient civilizations, reviewer Marie Miller-Whitehead of the Tennessee Valley Educators for Excellence described the book's second edition as "a handbook of contemporary qualitative research." Divided into six parts, with some fifty-six contributing authors, the book discusses (1) the historical, political, and ethical aspects of qualitative studies; (2) feminist, racial, ethnic, and sexual studies that have influenced current trends in qualitative research; (3) the current approaches to qualitative study, such as ethnography, life histories, case studies, and clinical research; (4) the collection and analysis of data in qualitative research; (5) the interpretation and evaluation of this data; and (6) the future of qualitative research. Part VI is "ever mindful," as Miller-Whitehead pointed out, "of what the editors describe as 'the structural processes that make race, gender and class potentially repressive presences in daily life.'" Miller-Whitehead observed, "The reader gains a feel for the evolution of the field and the boundaries it has set for itself. . . . [The editors delineate] the often blurred lines that divide areas of qualitative research, such as those that differentiate the study of folklore from ethnography, semiotics from symbolism, and the literary critic's explication de texte from Denzin's 'Practices and Politics of Interpretation.'"

Denzin and Lincoln coedited five subsequent books about qualitative research following publication of the Handbook. Strategies of Qualitative Inquiry contains Part III of the Handbook: "Strategies of Inquiry." The book begins with a discussion of the ways to organize and design a qualitative study, continues to paradigm or perspective, and then covers empirical research. The history of qualitative studies is accessed, as are the various ways of conducting qualitative interviews. The book Collecting and Interpreting Qualitative Materials contains Parts IV and V of the Handbook: "Methods of Collecting and Analyzing Empirical Materials" and "The Art of Interpretation, Evaluation, and Presentation."

The Qualitative Inquiry Reader contains a wide variety of the best articles from the Sage Publications journal Qualitative Inquiry. It is divided into five sections: "Reflexive Ethnography, Autoethnography, Poetics, Performance Narratives," and "Assessing the Text." The book is geared toward helping scholars and students evaluate the way narratives have been used in the best qualitative research and learn the newest techniques in the field.

Interpretive Ethnography: Ethnographic Practices for the 21st Century uses "postmodern" writings, including journalism, crime fiction, performance texts, narrative, and poetry, to form a theory of the type of ethnography arising from postmodernism. Sociology contributor Martyn Hammersley stated, "For me, the value of this book is primarily as a portrayal of the various forms of writing characteristic of 'ethnographic postmodernists.'. . . It does not provide an effective discussion of postmodernist ideas for newcomers or for those not already convinced." Hammersley called Denzin "a true believer in postmodernism," but said he "does not engage with the viewpoints of his opponents; he simply denounces them, for example as 'voyeurs'."

Denzin's works on cinema include The Cinematic Society: The Voyeur's Gaze and Reading Race: Hollywood and the Cinema of Racial Violence. In The Cinematic Society, Denzin answers four questions about film watching and how it has defined what is acceptable in modern society. He relates the "voyeur's gaze" to class, gender, and ethnicity and discusses the need to watch films and the cost to society. He also discusses film in terms of postmodernism. Marijean Levering of Film Quarterly felt Denzin is "most lucid and insightful when critiquing and explaining the undercurrents of a film," but she thought the book would have been more effective had the author "narrowed his theoretical focus."

Reading Race is concerned with film's relationship to race and culture, with Denzin arguing that film does not adequately portray diversity and multiculturalism, which it should honor. Divided into four parts, the book contains discussions of race, segregation, and discrimination; women and violence; weapons; "Boyz N Girlz in the Hood, Zoot Suits and Homeboys (and Girls);" and filmmaker Spike Lee.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Anthropologist, June, 1998, Ivan Brady, review of Interpretive Ethnography: Ethnographic Practices for the 21st Century, p. 510.

American Journal of Sociology, March, 1980, review of Childhood Socialization, p. 1278; September, 1985, review of On Understanding Emotion, p. 439; January, 1989, reviews of Treating Alcoholism: An Alcoholics Anonymous Approach, The Recovering Alcoholic, and The Alcoholic Self, p. 864; May, 1992, review of Hollywood Shot by Shot: Alcoholism in American Cinema, p. 1788; March, 1993, review of Images of Postmodern Society: Social Theory and Contemporary Cinema, p. 1208.

Book World, July 28, 1991, review of Hollywood Shot by Shot, p. 13.

Choice, October, 1984, review of On Understanding Emotion, p. 345; January, 1988, reviews of The Recovering Alcoholic and The Alcoholic Self, p. 803; December, 1991, review of Hollywood Shot by Shot, p. 674; October, 1995, review of The Cinematic Society: The Voyeur's Gaze, p. 301; September, 2000, T. N. Smalley, review of Handbook of Qualitative Research, 2nd edition, p. 106.

Contemporary Psychology, September, 1985, review of On Understanding Emotion, p. 731; January, 1990, review of Interpretive Interactionism, p. 86.

Contemporary Sociology, September, 1985, review of On Understanding Emotion, p. 552; July, 1990, review of Interpretive Interactionism, p. 626; March, 1991, review of Interpretive Biography, p. 328; March, 1992, review of Hollywood Shot by Shot, p. 262; November, 1993, review of Images of Postmodern Society, p. 883; January, 1994, review of Symbolic Interactionism and Cultural Studies: The Politics of Interpretation, p. 125; May, 1995, review of Handbook of Qualitative Research, p. 416; September, 1997, Patricia A. Adler and Peter Adler, "Ethnography and Human Development: Context and Meaning in Social Inquiry," review of Interpretive Ethnography, p. 654; July, 1998, Carolyn Ellis, review of Interpretive Ethnography, p. 422; January, 2001, review of Cultural Studies: A Research Annual, Volume 5, p. 98.

Film Quarterly, fall, 1992, review of Images of Post-modern Society, p. 38; fall, 1992, review of Hollywood Shot by Shot, p. 55; spring, 1998, Marijean Levering, review of The Cinematic Society, p. 66.

Harvard Educational Review, winter, 1996, review of Handbook of Qualitative Research, p. 890.

Journal of Communication, winter, 1993, review of Hollywood Shot by Shot, p. 168; spring, 1994, review of Images of Postmodern Society, p. 172.

Journal of Economic Literature, September, 2001, review of Studies in Symbolic Interaction: A Research Annual, Volume 24, p. 1056.

JQ: Journalism Quarterly, summer, 1992, review of Hollywood Shot by Shot, p. 513; summer, 1993, reviews of Symbolic Interactionism and Cultural Studies and Images of Postmodern Society, p. 468.

Quarterly Journal of Speech, February, 1998, Leslie H. Jarmon, review of Interpretive Ethnography, p. 117.

Reference & Research Book News, August, 1992, review of Hollywood Shot by Shot, p. 36; May, 1994, review of Handbook of Qualitative Research, p. 17; May, 1997, review of Interpretive Ethnography, p. 42.

Sight and Sound, December, 1991, review of Hollywood Shot by Shot, p. 35.

Social Forces, September, 1992, reviews of Images of Postmodern Society and Hollywood Shot by Shot, p. 252.

Social Science Quarterly, September, 1992, review of Hollywood Shot by Shot, p. 719.

Social Service Review, December, 1994, review of The Alcoholic Society: Addiction and Recovery of the Self, p. 613.

Sociological Review, November, 1990, reviews of Interpretive Interactionism and Interpretive Biography, p. 797; August, 1993, review of Images of Postmodern Society, p. 593; February, 1994, review of Symbolic Interactionism and Cultural Studies, p. 154.

Sociology, November, 1997, Martyn Hammersley, review of Interpretive Ethnography, p. 811.

ONLINE

Qualitative Social Research Forum Web site,http://qualitative-research.net/fqs/ (August 5, 2002), "Editorial Board: Norman K. Denzin."

Tennessee Valley Educators for Excellence Web site,www.ed.asu.edu/edrev/ (January 21, 2002), Marie Miller-Whitehead, review of Handbook of Qualitative Research, 2nd edition.*