Chapter 3: My Apprenticeship on the Prairie: Theory, Method, and Research in the Naturalistic Study of Social Interaction

I was a doctoral student in the Department of Sociology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, from 1977 until 1982, and Norman K. Denzin was my mentor. In this essay, I review what I learned from him in two graduate seminars as well as his own research during this period. His theoretical framework drew from the writings of Simmel, Mead, Blumer, Schutz, Goffman, and Garfinkel, but, for Denzin, theory was never divorced from empirical inquiry. The logic of naturalistic inquiry, his fundamental approach to methodology, provided the procedural framework for the formulation and assessment of theory. In addition, Denzin made important contributions to the study of self, socialization, social interaction, emotions, and deviance (especially criminogenic processes in the alcohol industry and the dynamics of domestic violence).