For Norman (and me)

Abstract

This is my tribute to Norm.

It’s 2006, the scene is the Second Annual International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry (ICQI) at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, on an ideal summerish evening. I’m walking up to the outside reception while a jazz band plays. The setting is cinematic. It’s exciting, and truthfully, a little intimidating. Presenting at conferences is fresh and I am relatively green. Not sure yet if I belong.

Norm Denzin is host. I recognize him, of course, along with so many of my academic heroes from the 1994, 2000, and 2005 editions of the Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research. And though I didn’t realize it at the time, there are so many others there too who would later join my group of scholarly role-models to whom I look up to, learn from, and aspire toward.

The campus is majestic and this part of the green is buzzing in fruitful discussion, banter, music, and Midwest hospitality and BBQ; many are standing, while others, myself included, are sitting on the lawn. In every direction, pockets of renegade scholars unbeholden to hegemonic nomothetic deity and other false idols are fully immersed in generative interaction basking in sustenance, revitalization, and mutual support.

Norm is the warm collector of people and ideas—whether established or at the margins—his garden is diverse and fertile. Organically, it is overseen by a caretaker who purposefully does not falsely distinguish among wildflower, weed, or plant. No this is an unapologetic guerilla plot in a positivist landscape.

In 1994, his co-edited (with Yvonna Lincoln) landmark text pulled together a disparate variety of nonpositivist researchers whose light dotted the methodological landscape. Remarkably, in the process, it helped legitimize an entire field creating for it a theoretical home to which, in 2005, Norm added a physical space with the founding and inaugural first Annual International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry.

Norm is pollinating—warm, inviting, insightful, and supportive:

The centre; yet not the centre of attention.

Postscript:

Last night I had my first Norman Denzin dream since he passed. Dream-Norm was addressing a crowded room, after having difficulty locating the correct hall (you know that feeling of reaching yet never attaining as some dream-Tantalus) I managed to find both the hall and a seat towards the front. As he was giving his talk, he glanced my way and acknowledged me with his expression: a sharpness in his eyes and a subtle quarter-smile. In my dream I feel so validated. Now, as I lay awake reflecting upon its meaning, and generally just trying to make sense of it all, it occurs to me. That’s what Norm did, with me, and with so many others, during all his interactions: he always validated with his signature encouragement, recognition, he fostered growth as he pushed to go deeper, beyond . . .

Thank you. And, in your own words:

“onward, norman.”