of the spectrum. It has allowed an additional layer of reflexivity while also drawing my
attention to details (as well as generalities—I am always thinking in terms of multiple
levels and scales, as well as in special and temporal terms) that would escape the
attention of researchers attempting a conventional ethnographic analysis.
At the same time, I have refrained from making this body of work I have been
constructing over the years public. While I have slipped in bits and pieces of narrative
analyses here and there within undergraduate and graduate work over the past 6 years, I
was conscious of the need for some analytical distance, as well as the lack of a tradition it
seemed appropriate to hook the work onto. Symbolic interaction, ethnomethodology,
phenomenology, and so on, all linked to aspects, but the more I read, the more tension I
had about proclaiming my project to fall under any single umbrella. Even naturalistic
observation carried excess and unwanted ideological baggage. This is not to mention the
growing unease I had as to the legitimacy of using direct experience as the primary data
for analysis. It always seemed alright for someone to use me as a subject, but I hesitated
to think using myself as a subject would be taken seriously by my colleagues. (This was
a very convoluted thing to wrestle in and of itself.) I mainly have Howard Becker (see
http://home.earthlink.net/~hsbecker/qa.html
) to thank for reorienting me to the actual
aims of my efforts . I was always geared towards the agenda Becker describes, but was
not sure if it was legitimately grounded. Now I have no doubt that I have a substantial
contribution to make at this particular time, to our study of ourselves and relations with
others. (Due to the substance, rather than just the source of the rationale—and that it
rings true to my own visions for sociology. See also the interview from PSA journal.)
Convention