Chapter 8: It's a Wonderful Qualitative Life: Norman Denzin and the Building of a Qualitative Community

Like the hero of the 1946 Capra movie It's a Wonderful Life, Norman Denzin has been a builder of his local community. While much attention has been paid to his intellectual contributions on methods and in several substantive areas, possibly his greatest accomplishments have been in the area of building and fostering a robust, international, multidisciplinary qualitative research community. This chapter explores some of these contributions, focusing on Denzin's leadership in creating the Handbook of Qualitative Research, the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry, and eight different journals or book series for which he serves as editor or coeditor. Through these channels, he has fostered the work of younger scholars, of marginalized groups, and of qualitative communities throughout the world, and supported innovative directions in qualitative theory and practice.