Naturalistic Inquiry in Theory and Practice - CiteSeerX

Journal of Contemporary Ethnography39(1) 87–125

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DOI: 10.1177/0891241609343663http://jce.sagepub.com

Naturalistic Inquiry in Theory and Practice

Lonnie Athens1

Abstract

Herbert Blumer sought to develop “naturalistic inquiry” to provide sociologists, especially those who subscribe to the perspective known as “symbolic interactionism,” with an alternative methodology to positivism for them to use in their research. Since Blumer died before he could complete the job, an attempt is made to finish the work that he left undone on the method of naturalistic inquiry along the lines originally envisioned by him. Among other things, more details are provided to help researchers to carry out the two stages of naturalistic inquiry that he identified: “exploration” and “inspection.” A third stage, confirmation, is also added to the method. Although Blumer described naturalistic inquiry only in theory, it is described here both in theory and actual practice, which is essential to make the method more understandable to others. In addition to providing a more complete statement of naturalistic inquiry, the ideas that he drew on to develop the method are revealed. Several myths surrounding the method and the grounded theories that can be potentially developed from using it are also exposed. Finally, the case is made that naturalistic inquiry occupies a relatively unique position in the social sciences.

Keywords

qualitative methods, naturalistic studies, grounded theories, Robert Park, Herbert Blumer

1Seton Hall University, South Orange, NJ

Corresponding Author:Lonnie Athens, Seton Hall University, Department of Criminal Justice, Arts & Sciences Hall, South Orange, NJ 07079.Email: [email protected]

at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on September 16, 2016jce.sagepub.comDownloaded from

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88 Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 39(1)

The term naturalistic study or some variant of it has been in circulation in social sciences for, at least, three quarters of a century (Angrosino 2007, 2; Blumer 1954/1969, 10; 1969, 21-47; Denzin 1971, 166-82; Matza 1969, 3-10; Park 1928/1955, 30; Schatzman and Strauss 1973, 5). Matza (1969, 5) contended that a naturalistic investigation “strives to remain true to the nature of the phenomena under study or scrutiny.” He quickly added that “this does not mean that the nature of phenomena is readily apparent; their nature may sometimes be at issue,” but “the resolution of that issue must be based on experience or more rigorous empirical methods.”

Leonard Schatzman and Anselm Strauss (1973, 5) opined that a natural-istic researcher “must get close to the people whom he studies; he under-stands their actions are best comprehended on the spot—in the natural, ongoing environment where they live and work.” Finally, Blumer (1954, 10) maintained that naturalistic research depends “on patient, careful and imaginative life study, not quick shortcuts or technical instruments. While its progress remains slow and tedious, it has the virtue of remaining in close and continuing relations with the natural social world.” Although this term has been bantered around the social sciences for all these years, many soci-ologists, at least, remain unclear about all the “ins” and “outs” of perform-ing a naturalistic study.

Despite this confusion over the full implications of conducting a natural-istic study, there are some observations that can be made about naturalistic studies with a reasonable amount of certainty. First, the subfields of sociol-ogy on which it has exercised the greatest impact are urban sociology and the sociology of crime and deviance. That naturalistic studies have had the greatest impact in these two subfields should come as no surprise since sociologists have seen, at least in the past, the problems of urban existence and crime and deviance as closely intertwined.

The place and date of the birth of naturalistic studies in American sociol-ogy can be also given with reasonable assurance. They were born and nur-tured in the University of Chicago’s sociology department primarily during its golden age, the years between 1918 and 1934, when Robert E. Park, the journalist turned sociologist, led the department. The classic monographs that were authored by faculty or students who were at Chicago during this general period include Anderson’s (1923) The Hobo, Shaw’s (1930) The Jack Roller, Sutherland’s (1937) The Professional Thief, Thomas’s (1923) The Unadjusted Girl, Thrasher’s (1927) The Gang, Wirth’s (1928) The Ghetto, and Zorbaugh’s (1929) The Gold Coast and the Slum. Finally, it can stated be with reasonable certitude that Herbert Blumer, who was both a junior faculty member and earlier a doctoral student in Chicago’s



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department of sociology during its halcyon years, is still today the single person who has done the most in sociology to develop the logic of natural-istic study and promote its use.

My article has three purposes. First, I intend to explain why and how Blumer developed the method known as “naturalistic inquiry.” The identifi-cation of the source of the ideas that Blumer drew on in his development of this method is important because he (1969, 2) gives the impression that he developed the method “out of the blue.” Second, and more importantly, I intend to provide a fuller and clearer statement of this method as an ideal-ized logic than he provided. Although Blumer (1928, 1930/1969, 1940/1969, 1954/1969, 1969, 39-47; 1979, 1980) expended considerable effort trying to work out the procedures of naturalistic inquiry, he never completed this task, a fact that he (1979, xxxiv) readily acknowledged.

Finally, I intend to provide a more thorough description of naturalistic inquiry as a logic in use than has been provided in the past by drawing on two early studies that I (1974, 1980, 1997) conducted on violent criminal acts and actors. I believe that more insight into how to use a method can be usually gained from a blow-by-blow description of how its various steps were actually performed in a study rather than from merely idealized accounts of how these steps should be performed in theory because a siz-able gap usually exists between the former and latter (Kaplan 1964, 3-11). By explaining the intellectual origin of naturalistic inquiry and describing it as both an idealized logic and a logic in use, I hope to remove some of the aura of mystery that still surrounds it.

Blumer’s Development of the Method of Naturalistic InquiryBlumer (1928, 1930/1969, 1940/1969, 1954/1969, 1962, 1969, 1979, 1980) spent most of his career trying to develop a general approach for sociolo-gists to use in conducting their research. According to him, an approach provides researchers with not only a frame of reference or theoretical per-spective but also a method for studying a problem. On one hand, a perspec-tive is the theoretical lens that helps researchers to discern what is important and, thereby, suggests some of the things that they should keep an eye open for while conducting their studies. On the other hand, a method is the logi-cal procedures that researchers should follow in gathering and analyzing information that they determine from their actual study of a problem is vital to understanding it. A perspective and method for studying a problem always go hand in hand because a perspective always implies a corresponding




method and a method always implies a corresponding perspective. Thus, Blumer believed that researchers must select an approach in which the per-spective and method are congruent rather than incongruent with one another (Blumer 1969, vii, 60; 1953/1969, 108-16; Keyfitz 1970, 65-66).

Blumer developed the method of “naturalistic inquiry” for sociologists to use from the methodological directives of Park (1950, 1952, 1955; Park and Burgess 1924). Blumer was both a student and later a junior colleague of Park’s in the University of Chicago’s department of sociology. He (1963, emphasis added) elaborates on the great impact that Park’s methodological views had on him and others below:

His teaching was always stimulating to graduate students without being dramatic. Aside from his insightful observations on the sub-stantive matters which he might be discussing, what impressed me most was his emphasis on discerning procedure. He was always stressing the need for sociologists to get out into the world of people who the student proposed to study. This emphasis upon entering into the actual round of life of human beings was one of his notable con-tributions which today is more in order than ever. The second thing that impressed me was his emphasis on continual, imaginative, criti-cal, flexible thinking and observation. While I never heard him make the analogy, I would say he advocated precisely the method of obser-vation and study which is so clearly revealed in the work of Charles Darwin. One methodological feature which he stressed has always impressed me as of very great value. This was to endeavor to clarify the meaning of a concept by first identifying, as well as one could, the class of things to which the concept referred and then seeking very carefully to single out for distinction this class of things and other classes of things that lay in the margin between them. Personally, I think that it is precisely in this marginal area that con-cepts become clarified and assume their real, vital, distinctive mean-ing. As I remarked, this was a matter which Park stressed a great deal; I have never found it either dealt with in the literature or followed consciously by other students in our field.

Among other things, Park (1929b/1952, 199, 1931b/1955, 244, 250; 1940/1955, 317) repeatedly made the point that the single most important element in any scientific study is the “frame of reference,” which the researcher adopts for conducting it. Although Park believed that sociology was a natural science and based on the assumption of determinism, he was



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a staunch critic of positivism (Park and Burgess 1924, 12, 16, 23; Park 1935/1955, 42-43; 1940/1955, 315-18). His antipositivism was primarily based on his belief that the use of complex measurement techniques in soci-ology was usually an exercise in futility (Park 1939/1952, 123-25).

According to Park, if complex operational techniques, such as interval and ratio scales, are used in sociological research, then the meaning of our units of analysis are usually sacrificed for the sake of giving them the appearance of precision. He (1939/1952, 123-24) expressed his great skep-ticism about such complex measurement techniques with the quip, “The manipulation of statistical data by which such scales are contrived and applied has always impressed me a good deal like parlor magic. One is fre-quently startled by the results but is mainly interested to discover by what sleight of hand that the trick was turned.”

In addition, Park urged that sociologists should form their concepts from making constant comparison and discovering the relationships among them from searching for “negative cases” that forced them to progressively revise their formulations of the relationships (Park and Burgess 1924, 12, 23, 45). Park also believed that sociologists should always test and, thereby, never accept merely on face value the validity of their theories (Park and Burgess 1924, 12). Moreover, Park (1929a/1952, 75; 1929b/1952, 203-4; 1931b/1955, 257; 1940/1955, 303, 317) was an early and strong proponent of sociologists using qualitative methods, such as participant observation and life histories, and the need for them to gain firsthand knowledge of the problems that they investigated. Finally, Park believed that the perspective and methods that sociologists used in their research should be consistent with one another and that sociological research should remain nonpartisan (Park and Burgess 1924, 44; Park 1931a/1955, 268). Although Park (1942/1955, 322-23) described the methodological directives that sociologists should follow in conducting research that conformed to his general model of sociology as a natural science, he never outlined the basic procedures or steps that they should follow in carrying out naturalistic studies.

Like Park, Blumer viewed sociology as a natural science and was anti-positivism. In fact, Blumer (1930/1969, 1940/1969, 1954/1969, 1956/1969, 1959/1969, 1969, 1980) greatly advanced Park’s critique of positivism and, in the process, became America’s leading critic of its use in sociology fol-lowing Park’s death. Moreover, Blumer agreed with all of Park’s method-ological directives that were just described, including his one on determinism, but with one important qualification. Thus, contrary to some sociologists’ often repeated opinions (Meltzer and Petras 1970, 9-11; Meltzer, Petras, and Reynolds 1975, 61-63; Petras and Reynolds 1994, 56), Blumer was not an




antideterminist because he believed that this was a matter that should be decided from actual empirical study rather than something that should be merely accepted or rejected a priori from philosophical speculation. Blumer (Athens, 1993b, 172, emphasis added) explains his rather novel position on determinism below:

The fact that . . . [actor’s] lines of action may be abandoned, checked, intensified, weakened, or transformed, as they take their situations and themselves into account, signifies in no way that the process of forming such new and irregular actions is incapable of being studied and explained deterministically. I am satisfied that if one has adequate data on the nature of the situation that confronts an actor, or what he notes in that situation, on how he interprets what he notes, on the lines of prospective action that he stakes out, and on how he guides himself by his idea of what to do, one would be in a position to reduce the given instance of new or irregular conduct to a causal account.

More importantly for our present concerns, however, Blumer (1969, 21-47) designed the special logical procedures that now constitute naturalistic inquiry not merely for the general purpose of providing sociologists with an alternative methodology to positivism to use in conducting their research. He also designed it for the specific purpose of using it in conjunction with the perspective of symbolic interactionism, which he not only named (1937) but also championed (1962, 1966/1969, 1969, 1-60).

Unlike the method of naturalistic inquiry that Blumer developed primarily from Park’s ideas, Blumer (1962, 179-81; 1966/1969, 1969, 1-2; 1981, 2002; Athens 1993a, 156; 1993b, 163) developed the theoretical perspective of symbolic interactionism primarily from the ideas of another one of his former Chicago mentors, George H. Mead (1932, 1934, 1936, 1938, 1982), who taught in the university’s department of philosophy rather than sociology. Like in the case of Park, Blumer also became later a colleague of Mead’s at Chicago. Since our main concern here is with Blumer’s method of naturalistic inquiry, we will not delve into the problem of how he developed the perspec-tive of symbolic interactionism from Mead’s ideas.

According to Blumer, the central tenet on which symbolic interaction rests is that people’s actions result from their interpretations of the situa-tions that confront them in their everyday lives. Our ability to interpret the situations that confront us daily is a byproduct of our possession of selves (Blumer 1962, 181; Athens 1993b, 164). A self not only enables us to assume the attitudes of the other people but also enables us to assume the



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attitude of what Mead called our “generalized other” or community in deciding the course of action that we should take in a situation.

With the aid of selves, people interpret situations in a process that has two ongoing, alternating phases. During the first phase of definition, we assume the attitudes of the other people directly involved in the situation. By assuming their attitudes, we can tell ourselves what they are planning to do. During the second or judgment phase, we assume the attitude of our generalized other. By assuming our generalized other’s or community’s atti-tude, we decide on how to conduct ourselves in a situation based on our earlier definition of it. Of course, if we should redefine the situation before carrying out this course of action, then we always can later rejudge it and, thereby, decide on some new course of action to take in it (Blumer 1969, 55; 1966/1969, 73; 1955/1969, 96).

In addition to interpreting the situations that confront us in everyday life, however, we can also form interpretations of ourselves as members of the human race in this same two-phase process. During the definition phase, we assume the attitudes of other people who know us well and tell ourselves how they see us. Next, during the judgment phase, we assume the attitude of our generalized other and tell ourselves how our corporal community would eval-uate us in light of these earlier individuals’ opinions. Thus, we weigh the individual opinions of people who know us from our generalized other’s atti-tude. The ultimate outcome of this interpretive process is our “self-image.”

Like both Mead and Park, Blumer was very impressed by Darwin’s (1859/1993; also see Desmond and Moore 1991) naturalistic study of the evolution of animals. He (1969, 40-43; 1930/1969, 164) concurred with Park that the same method should be used in the study of human beings. In Blumer’s mind, the main difference between studying human beings and other animals is that we have selves and, thereby, can interpret the situations that confront us, whereas they do not possess selves and, thereby, cannot interpret the situations that confront them. Because people’s interpretations of situations are part of the natural world, however, there is no reason that the conduct of human beings, including, of course, their interpretations of situations, is not just as susceptible to naturalistic study as the conduct of any other animal.

Naturalistic Inquiry in Theory: An Expanded StatementAlthough Blumer (1928, 247-431; 1930/1969, 1940/1969, 1954/1969, 1969, 39-47; 1979, v-xxxviii; 1980, 411-16) worked on and off for over fifty years




trying to work out all the details of naturalistic inquiry by the time of his death in 1987, he had not come close to finishing the job that he started back in 1928. Among other things, he included neither all the stages necessary for executing the method nor all the vital details necessary for carrying out the stages that he did include. Thus, in the present statement of this method, I will take the liberty of adding a stage that he left out and filling in some of the vital details that he omitted from the stages that he did include in his description of the method.

According to Blumer (1969, 46-48; 1979, xiv-xxviii), naturalistic inquiry refers to a special form of inquiry that respects the natural integrity of the empirical problem under study. For the natural integrity of a problem to be respected, the problem must be studied in its natural ongoing character without imposing a fixed preconceived order on it (Blumer 1969, 46). Blumer (1979, xxiv-v) describes rather eloquently his litmus test for what qualifies as a naturalistic study:

By naturalistic study, I refer to the observation of given area of hap-pening in terms of its natural or actual character, as opposed to the observation of a surrogate or substitute form of that area of happen-ing. Many, indeed, most modes of study of human group life do not study that life as it is going on naturally. Instead, they deal with some kind of contrived, imported, or constructed representation of that area of happening. This can be very clearly seen in the case of the labora-tory experiment which is arranged to reproduce some form of behav-ior from real life but is not that real life. The difference is also evident in the study of simulated behavior as against real behavior. The dif-ference is also to be noted in the case of studies which focus on the products of what happens in place of observing the course of happen-ings that give rise to the products. Also, conventional studies which start with a constructed model of what is to be studied and which make contact with the actual world through deductions from the model differ from naturalistic study. Also, a difference is to be noted in the case of studies which seek to reconstruct a picture of what hap-pened and then proceed to study that reconstruction. Also, a clear difference exists between naturalistic study and such studies, such as survey research, which aim to provide an idea of how people might act as opposed to how they have acted or are acting. A little reflection should make clear that, to an overwhelming extent, current studies are not “naturalistic” in the sense of focusing inquiry and observation on the actual flow of human group life.



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For Blumer (1969, 39-47; Athens 1984, 245-48), naturalistic inquiry is composed of two stages: “exploration” and “inspection.” However, there is a third stage, which I label “confirmation,” which Blumer overlooked, that must be added to naturalistic inquiry to make it complete. During the first stage, exploration, you write detailed descriptions with the help of only a few initial, rudimentary ideas of actual empirical instances of the problem under study. Exploration requires the researcher to perform, at least, two tasks. The first and most important one that you must perform during natu-ralistic inquiry is to acquire a sufficient amount of firsthand knowledge about the problem under study so you will have an empirically sound basis for defining your problem and selecting the initial rudimentary ideas to use in later investigating it (Blumer 1930/1969, 168). For Blumer (1969, 35-39), the biggest mistake that researchers can make is starting out a study with inappropriate leading ideas, including a misconception of their problem, and later never revising or correcting them. Although Blumer recognized that no one can begin a study with a “blank mind,” he definitely believed that you could start one with an “open” rather than a “closed” mind. Thus, if you find that your conception of the problem under study and your other leading ideas for studying it are at odds with your firsthand knowledge, then you must always be ready either to revise them or discard them altogether and invent new ones.

The second task that you must perform during exploration is to describe your problem on the basis of information that you collected by naturalistic techniques, such as in-depth interviewing or participant observation. Infor-mation is gathered naturalistically when the means that you use in its collec-tion respect rather than violate the problem’s natural integrity. However, I think that it now needs to be acknowledged that it is probably impossible to conduct a study in which the natural integrity of the problem under study is not violated, at least some. Although Blumer viewed the naturalistic study of a problem in zero-sum terms, it is actually always a matter of degree. Thus, you must choose the technique of information gathering that least violates and thereby most respects the natural integrity of your problem given the practical realities involved in actually studying it.

During the second stage of naturalistic inquiry, inspection, you analyze the written descriptions of your problem in the field or interview notes that you earlier took during the exploratory stage with the help of your “reality-tested” conception of the problem and other proven rudimentary ideas (Blumer 1930/1969, 158). To inspect these descriptions, you must perform two related tasks. The first one is to construct well-defined and -developed concepts from your initial rudimentary ideas. More specifically, you must




transform the small set of crude, leading ideas with which you began your study into a larger body of much more polished and dense concepts. During concept construction, you also must always sharpen your initial conception of the problem from immersing yourself in the real world and then compar-ing what you described as going on there in your field or interview notes against your initial conception of it.

You further develop all your leading ideas, including your problem, by the dual means of constant comparison and the deliberate search for nega-tive instances. First, by constantly comparing the descriptions of the prob-lem made with the help of your original rudimentary ideas, you must further elaborate and extend them until all the variegated forms of your problem described in your field or interview notes can be subsumed under those rudimentary ideas. If you uncover any “negative instances,” that is, aspects of the problem that cannot be comfortably placed under one of your initial ideas, however, then you must either revise your present notions or discard them altogether and invent new rudimentary ideas to take their place until all the descriptions of the problem found in your notes can be comfortably subsumed under these ideas.

The second task that you must perform during inspection is the construc-tion of propositions by connecting your newly developed concepts. You accomplish this task by using the same dual means that you used earlier to accomplish the task of concept construction, except here your goal is not to form well-developed and highly polished concepts but to discover the link-ages or connections among them. First, by constantly comparing the indi-vidual instances of a relationship between your newly developed concepts described in your field or interview notes, you progressively revise the nature of that relationship until it can cover or account for all the individual instances of that relationship found in your notes. An indispensable tool for discovering the relationships among your concepts is to construct what Charles Ragin (1994, 120-29; also see Becker 1998, 164-72, 212-14) has aptly labeled as a “truth table”—a table where the rows represent each case that you studied and all the columns, going from left to right, represent your different concepts, except for the ones at the end, and your end columns represent the presence or absence of the different relationship that you think could possibly exist among them.

If you find a single instance of that relationship described in your field or interview notes that contradicts the invariant relationship that you formu-lated earlier, however, then you must do either one of two things. You can either revise the nature of the relationship until it can account for this newly uncovered negative instance in your notes or else you can redefine your



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conception of the problem under study to eliminate the entire case from your study’s purview. Of course, if you decide to take the latter course of action, then you cannot redefine your problem solely to eliminate a negative case. Consistent with good common sense, you can redefine your problem for this purpose only if it ultimately provides you with a more meaningful and precise conception of it (Athens 2007a).

The third stage of naturalistic inquiry is confirmation. During this stage, the researcher needs to subject the results produced from his or her inspec-tion to preliminary testing. To confirm the results of his or her inspection, the researcher must perform two tasks. The first task that you must perform for this purpose is to put the ideas and relationships discovered between them in a more testable form. The most testable form in which you can state them is propositions. As Morris Cohen and Ernest Nagel (1934, 27) note, “For purposes of logic, a proposition may be defined as anything which can be said to be true or false.” After converting all the ideas and the relation-ships found among them produced from your earlier inspection of your cases into a series of logical propositions, you are ready to perform the sec-ond task, which is to recheck all your propositions against all the cases that you collected during the exploration stage.

You test your propositions by re-reviewing all your interview or observa-tion notes to make certain that they do not find any cases that contradict any of the propositions that you formulated. While performing this task you must bear in mind that it can be just as big a mistake for a researcher to take into account a fictitious negative instance as it is to ignore a genuinely nega-tive one. Drawing the distinction between a genuine and a fictitious nega-tive instance can be sometimes a tricky matter requiring considerable discernment on your part. Nevertheless, the preliminary testing of your propositions is worth the effort because it permits you to assert with abso-lute confidence that there exists strong empirical support for them and, thereby, that they are grounded in reality. Of course, if the history of science teaches us anything, then it is that there is no finality in science (Mead 1932, 101, 105; 1936, 266). No amount of confirmatory studies can prove a theory or set of propositions for all time. Later studies can always be conducted that disconfirm the findings of studies done earlier. Sometimes new studies also can be conducted that prove that older theories never given much cre-dence when they were originally developed contain more truth than was earlier believed.

Finally, it should not be concluded from anything that I have said here that once we complete our naturalistic study of a problem it no longer has any further research value to us. After you have finished your exploration




and inspection of a problem and confirmed the propositions that it yielded, you can always go back years later and reinspect your original analysis for help with another research project on the same or similar problem. There is nothing, at least in principle, that prevents us from returning to a research project completed even many decades earlier and reinspecting all the field or interview notes taken during that earlier project. If a researcher still retains interest further developing some aspect of that same general prob-lem, then the reinspection of previously collected information not only is possible but also can prove invaluable. The reinspection of information gathered in a long completed research project allows a researcher to reex-amine it from a fresh perspective and spot things to which he or she was previously blind and thereby missed. Nearsightedness is an affliction from which all researchers suffer and that only the passage of time can cure. You can always improve on past ways of conceptualizing different aspects of your problem, which you can then subject to confirmation with already gathered or newly collected data.1 Thus, you can endlessly build on your previously completed naturalistic studies.

Naturalistic Inquiry in Practice: Studying Violent Criminal Acts and ActorsTo illustrate the use of naturalistic inquiry in practice, I decided to use my studies of “violent criminal acts and actors” (1974, 1980, 1997). Of course, there is an obvious advantage to using a study that you rather than someone else conducted for this purpose. You have more ready access to the intimate details of how you used the method of naturalistic inquiry and, thereby, can more easily demonstrate than would otherwise be the case how you explored your problem, inspected your cases, and later confirmed your findings. According to Jennifer Platt (1996/1998, 268), this is a standard practice for sociologists writing about research methods. I also chose these two particu-lar studies of mine for the purpose of this illustration because people have often expressed great puzzlement as to how I actually carried them out, so I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to address their queries.

The Preliminary StudyDuring the preliminary phase of my ethnographic research project on vio-lent crime, I (1974) drew heavily on my firsthand knowledge of it. How-ever, I need to point out that my firsthand knowledge of violent crime was not acquired at the time for the purpose of conducting a research project. On



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the contrary, I decided to carry out a research project on violent crime because of my firsthand knowledge of it rather than the other way around. Since I had this firsthand knowledge, I figured why not use it (see Rhodes 2000, part I). In the appendix to my book Violent Criminal Acts and Actors Revisited, I (1997, 121) explained how I had reached this decision:

The participant observation that I drew on in this research was at the time not done for the purpose of a study. In fact, I did this study as a result of my participant observation rather than the other way around. After observing many substantially violent acts and violent actors, I became interested in reading the formal literature on this topic during my first semester as a graduate student. Since I was astonished by the fact that this literature did not correspond with my firsthand observa-tions and experiences, I decided to carry out a study of my own on the problem of violent criminality.

I drew heavily on my firsthand knowledge of violent crime in both initially defining my problem and selecting the rudimentary ideas with which to begin my study of it. I knew from my firsthand knowledge that as far as street violence is concerned, people on the street distinguish between two basic kinds. On one hand, there is what is known as “petty Annie bullshit,” such as scuffling with or copping a feel from someone. On the other hand, there is what was then called “fucking somebody up bad” and “taking it,” or “booty robbing.” Thus, during my preliminary study, I focused my attention only on people who had committed a serious violent criminal act or, in more common parlance, “fucked up somebody bad or booty robbed,” rather than a trivial one or, in more common parlance, only “scuffled with or copped a feel from someone.” I also drew on my firsthand knowledge of violent crime in selecting the three basic rudimentary ideas with which I began my study: (1) violent criminals form interpretations of the situations in which they commit violent crimes, (2) they form images or pictures of themselves in their minds, and (3) their self-images must be somehow related to the violent interpretations that they form of situations, although I did not really know why or how.

During the preliminary phase of my research project, I (1974) examined the problem of violent crime with the assistance of twenty-three violent offenders. I explored how they interpreted the situations in which they had committed their serious violent criminal acts and the self-images that they held during the general period of their lives when they committed these violent crimes. I collected information on their violent interpretations of




situations and self-images by the long-accepted naturalistic technique of in-depth interviewing. During these interviews, I repeatedly questioned or, more precisely, cross-examined them about what they thought and felt, if anything, when they committed their violent criminal acts. In addition, I asked them what they thought of themselves around the general time of their offense, how they thought the people who knew them thought of them during that same general time, and if these people’s views of them were accurate or not.

After all my interviews with the participants had been completed, I was faced with the task of inspecting the notes that I had taken both during and after my interviews were finished. Before I started the inspection of my interview notes, it struck me to construct what is now known as a “truth table,” but, as far as I am aware, it had no name back then. Down the left-hand margin of the legal pad, I drew a vertical line on which I consecutively listed the numbers that I had assigned to my participants—starting with 1 and ending with 23. At the top of the same page, I also drew a horizontal line on which I wrote three headings: (1) “interpretations,” (2) “self images,” and (3) “relationship.” Using these numbers and headings, I created twenty-three rows and three columns and, thereby, formed sixty-nine empty boxes or cells, which I had to wait until later to fill in.

Before these boxes could be filled in, I needed to finish inspecting my interview notes. I began my inspection by reading and rereading my notes on the participants’ interpretations of the situations in which they commit-ted their violent criminal acts. While reading these various accounts of their violent crimes, I began classifying them into different types or categories based on their apparent similarities and differences. This classification pro-cess turned out to be far more difficult than I had anticipated. I had to define and redefine my classes or types of interpretations over and over again before I became reasonably satisfied with the classification system. As best as I can now recall, I finally settled on three basic types of violent interpre-tations plus a residual category in which I stuck all my negative instances, the accounts that I could not comfortably place under any one of my three already identified types. After reading and rereading the accounts placed in this residual category over and over again, I suddenly realized that they all displayed characteristics similar to two of my existing types. Thus, to elimi-nate these negative instances from my study, I combined these two different types together to form a new fourth type of violent interpretation.

After constantly comparing the accounts that I had now placed into these four types of interpretations, I “sifted out,” as Blumer liked to say, what I thought, at the time, were their different defining characteristics. On the



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basis of their different respective defining characteristics, I (1974, 103-10) provisionally constructed four distinct types of violent interpretations of situations:

Physically defensive interpretations of the situation are formed when the actor indicates to himself either (1) that a physical attack upon him is forthcoming and, by making further self-indications, judges that he must make a violent response in order to block the other from inflicting physical injury upon him; or (2) that a physical attack is actually taking place upon him and by making further self-indications judges that he must respond violently in order to block the other from inflicting further physical injury upon him. The meaning behind the actor’s violent response is that of a means to handle another’s forth-coming or occurring physical attack. The key feature of all physically defensive interpretations is that a gesture is made by another that the actor designates to himself as foreshadowing a physical attack or as directly indicating that a physical attack is taking place. (1974, 103)

Frustrative interpretations of the situation begin in two ways: (1) when an actor designates to himself that the gestures of the other indicate resistance to a line of action that he seeks to carry out, or (2) when an actor designates to himself that the gestures of the other indicate that he should follow a line of action that he does not want carried out. In both instances, by making further self-indications, the actor then judges that a violent response is the means of meeting the other’s responses. The meaning behind the actor’s violent response is as a means to handle the other’s blockage of the larger act that he wants to carry out—for example, robbery, sexual intercourse, car theft—or as a means to block the larger act that the other wants to carry out - for example, calling the police or arrest. The crucial fea-ture of all frustrative interpretations is the actor’s designations to himself of the direction along which the larger act is heading and his desire for the act not to follow that course. (1974, 105)

A malefic interpretation of a situation is formed when an actor indicates to himself the malicious or extremely negative character of the other and his behavior and, by making further self-indications, calls out within himself a violent response. The meaning behind the actor’s violent response is that of a means of responding toward the highly negative object that he has constructed of the other and his behavior. The distinguishing feature in the actor’s formation of a malefic interpretation is always the occurrence of a “fixed line of




indication,” that is the actor makes indications to himself in the situ-ation as to the extreme negative character of the other and his behav-ior to the almost complete exclusion of other things. He, in other words, fails to indicate to himself other things in the situation to judge before making his overt response. (1974, 104)

Frustrative—malefic interpretations are formed in a two-step pro-cess. First, by making indications to himself, the actor judges that the other either is resisting a line of actions that he wants to carry out or wants him to follow a course of action that he does not want to carry out. The actor, by making further indications to himself then con-structs an extremely negative object of the other and his behavior. The former set of self-indications in conjunction with the latter set lead the actor to make the judgment to respond violently toward the other. The mark of all frustrative-malefic interpretations is that the negative object formed by the actor of the other and this behavior always springs directly from the actor’s present interaction with the other. (1974, 106)

Next, I turned my attention to inspecting my interview notes on the self-images that my participants held of themselves around the general time of the commission of their violent crimes. The inspection of my notes on the participants’ self-images proved much easier than my inspection of my notes on their violent interpretations of situations for a simple reason. The information that my participants provided me on their self-portraits varied much less than the information that they had provided me on their violent interpretations of situations. After reading and rereading my interview notes, I was surprised to find that almost all my participants’ self-portraits fell into one basic type—“violent.” I also found that the two or three partici-pants whose self-portraits did not fall under this type all could be easily placed under one other basic type—“nonviolent.” After constantly compar-ing the participants’ self-images that fell into these two different categories against each other, I sifted out their different identifying attributes. Based on their different respective identifying attributes, I (1974, 101-4) tenta-tively constructed two distinct types of self-images:

Non-violent self images are those in which actors see themselves and are seen by others primarily as players of some conventional role—familial or occupational, for example; as players of some non-conventional role—pool hustler or petty racketeer; or primarily in terms of non-violence-related personal attributes-ambitious, shy, lazy, personable,



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etc. Most importantly, in these self images, a willingness or readiness to respond violently is not depicted. (1974, 101)

Violent self images are those in which actors see themselves and are seen by others primarily as players of some violence-related role such as gunman, bouncer, bar brawler, and/or primarily in terms of violent personal attributes –ill-tempered, hot-headed, forceful, mean, overbearing, etc. Most importantly, in these self images, a willing-ness or readiness to respond violently is always depicted. In other words, a violent disposition is always present in the objects that these actors construct of themselves. (1974, 101)

With the completion of the inspection of my interview notes on the partici-pants’ interpretations of violent situations and their self-portraits, I was now ready to take on the last task in my inspection, the construction of proposi-tions. More specifically, I needed to find out if my participants’ self-images were linked to their violent interpretations and, if so, then how exactly they were related to one another. To make this job easier, I turned for help to the truth table that I had earlier set up. Before I could use my truth table for this purpose, however, I needed to fill in the empty boxes in the first two of its three columns. As will be recalled, I labeled the first column “violent interpre-tations” and the second one “self-images.” Accordingly, I filled in the empty boxes down the first column with “physical defensive,” “frustrative,” “malefic,” and “frustrative-malefic” interpretations, and I filled in those that ran down the second column with “nonviolent” and “violent” self-images. Scanning my partially completed truth table, I recall noticing almost immedi-ately that all the participants with nonviolent self-portraits committed their violent criminal acts only after forming physically defensive interpretations, while all the participants with violent self-portraits, except for one, committed their violent criminal acts after forming pure frustrative, pure malefic, or the combined frustrative-malefic interpretations.

The obstacle before me was now clear: I needed to figure out a way to state the relationship between my participants’ self-portraits and their vio-lent interpretations of situations that could include this potentially negative instance or else redefine my conception of the problem to exclude this case from the purview of my study. Because my definition of the problem still made perfectly good sense to me, there was no point in revising it, at least on this account. Instead, I opted to take the former rather than the latter route. While examining and reexamining this potentially negative case, it finally dawned on me that if people with nonviolent self-portraits commit-ted violent criminal acts on the basis of physical defensive interpretations,




then it was only a matter of common sense that people with violent self-portraits should also commit them on basis of this same interpretation. Obviously, the less violent individuals are, then the more provocation would be required for them to become violent and, conversely, the more violent that individuals are, then the less provocation that should be necessary for them to become violent. Thus, I concluded that a person with a violent self-image would commit a violent criminal act in all the same situations as a person with a nonviolent one. However, it definitely should not be expected that a person with a nonviolent self-image would commit a violent criminal act in all the same situations as a person with a violent one. It was on the basis of this rationale I was able to devised a tentative relationship between my participants’ violent interpretations and their self-images that could account for all the cases in my preliminary study:

In the cases at hand, actors who hold non-violent self images commit violent criminal acts in those situations in which they form physically defensive interpretations. Those holding violent self images, on the other hand, commit violent criminal acts in situations in which they form malefic, frustrative, and frustrative-malefic interpretations as well as physically defensive interpretations. (1974, 107, emphasis added)

The Main StudyDuring the main phase of my ethnographic research project, I (1980, 1997) extended the work done in my preliminary study with the help of thirty-seven more violent criminals, thirty-five of whom were incarcerated and two of whom had never been incarcerated or, at least, were not at the time that my study was conducted. Unlike in my preliminary study, however, the participants for my main study included men and women rather than only men. If the thirty-seven participants from my main study are combined with the twenty-three from my preliminary one, then the total number of partici-pants in the research project rises to sixty, which struck me as a formidable number when it is considered that I conducted lengthy in-depth interviews with them that usually required several sessions to finish.

I began the study of my thirty-seven new participants with the help of six leading ideas. I had already used four of them in my preliminary study: (1) the interpretation of situations in which a violent crime had been committed, (2) the self-images of violent criminals, (3) the relationship between their self-images and violent interpretations of situations, and (4) serious violent crimes



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where the victims had been “fucked up bad” or had their “booty taken.” To these four previously used leading ideas, I added two important new ones: (5) the interpretations of near-violent situations and (6) violent criminal careers. As in case of my preliminary study, I used the naturalistic technique of in-depth interviews to explore the problem of violent crime.

Thus, during my main study, I not only continued my earlier exploration of serious violent crimes, my participants’ interpretations of violent situa-tions, their self-portraits, and the linkage between their violent interpreta-tions and self-images but also initiated exploration into their interpretations of near-violent situations and their violent careers. In the case of their near-violent interpretations of situations, I asked them what they thought and felt during situations in which they had almost but did not ultimately commit violent criminal acts. To explore my participants’ violent careers, I asked them two sets of questions:

The first set of questions dealt with their self-images. I asked the offenders how they saw themselves at the time of their offense; how they thought others saw them during that time period; whether these others saw them correctly and why; and how long, or between what approximate ages, they saw themselves and thought others saw them in this way. The second set of questions dealt with the offenders’ past violent criminal actions. I asked them to describe all the past violent acts that they had perpetrated during the period of their lives when they held the self-image just described. I also asked them to note the degree of injury that they inflicted on the other person, approximately how old they were when they committed the act, and whether the police contacted them with regard to it. (Athens 1997, 69)

After completing the exploratory stage of naturalistic inquiry during my main study, I was ready to begin again its second stage, inspection. As will be recalled, two tasks must be performed during inspection—the construc-tion of concepts and propositions. From my inspection of my new partici-pants’ interpretations of the situations in which they had committed violent crimes, I found that these interpretations fell into similar basic types as those of my participants from my preliminary study—physically defensive, pure frustrative, pure malefic, and frustrative-malefic. Among other things, I found that some of the qualities that I had earlier concluded defined some of these interpretations were actually spurious rather than genuine defining features of them. For example, I had earlier thought that a “fixed line of indication” was a defining feature of malefic interpretations of situations,




only to find out later that it was a more generic feature of violent interpreta-tions and, thereby, in no way unique to malefic ones.

I also realized belatedly that I had earlier completely overlooked the per-spective or attitude of the generalized other or community from which my participants had formed these four different types of violent interpretations. I did not initially detect their generalized other’s operation for the pure and simple reason that it usually operates implicitly rather than explicitly during the interpretive process. If no one challenges our actions, then we do not ordinarily feel any need to explain the grounds for our engaging in those actions either to other people or ourselves. On the contrary, we usually take the attitude of our generalized other merely for granted. The methodologi-cal implication of this belated insight on my part is that the perspective or attitude underlying people’s actions must be usually inferred from what they said and did and how they said and did it during the actual situations when they said and did it. Thus, during my inspection of the participants in my main study and reinspection of the participants in my preliminary study’s violent interpretations, I inferred as best as I could how the underly-ing attitude of their generalized other toward violence operated in their for-mation of violent interpretations from what they said and how they said it during the situations in which they committed their violent crimes.

Consequently, during my main study, I (1997, 33-41) was forced to develop not only much sharper but also much more intricate conceptions of my earlier four types of violent interpretations:

Physically defensive interpretations of a situation [are created in two essential steps]. First, by assuming the attitude of the victim, the per-petrator implicitly or explicitly indicates to himself that the victims gestures mean either (1) that the victim will soon physically attack him or an intimate, such as a spouse or child, or (2) that the victim is already physically attacking him or an intimate. Second, by assuming an attitude of his generalized other, the perpetrator then implicitly or explicitly indicates to himself that he ought to respond violently toward the victim and calls out within himself a violent plan of action. The perpetrator forms his violent plan of action because he sees violence as the only means of preventing another person from inflicting physical injury on him or an intimate. The key feature of all physically defensive interpretations is that the victim makes a gesture that the perpetrator designates to himself as foreshadowing or consti-tuting a physical attack, generating a grave sense of fear in him for his own or an intimate’s physical safety. (1997, 33-34)



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Frustrative interpretations are formed in two basic steps. First, by assuming the attitude of the victim, the perpetrator implicitly or explicitly indicates to himself that the victim’s gestures mean either (1) that the victim is resisting or will resist the specific course of action that the perpetrator seeks to carry out, or (2) that the perpetra-tor should cooperate in a specific course of action that he does not want carried out. Second, by assuming an attitude of his generalized other, the perpetrator then implicitly or explicitly indicates to himself that he ought to respond violently toward the victim and calls out within himself a violent plan of action. The perpetrator forms this violent plan of action because he sees violence as the most appropri-ate way to handle another person’s potential or attempted blockage of the larger act that the perpetrator wants to carry out—for example, robbery, sexual intercourse, car theft—or to block the larger act that the other person wants to carry out—for example, calling the police or arresting the perpetrator. The mark of all frustrative interpretations is that the perpetrator becomes angry after designating to himself the direction along which the larger act is heading and his desire for the act not to follow that course. (1997, 36-37)

Malefic interpretations are formed in a three-step process. First, by assuming the attitude of the victim, the perpetrator implicitly or explicitly indicates to himself that the victim’s gestures mean that the victim is deriding or badly belittling the perpetrator. Second, by assuming an attitude of his generalized other, the perpetrator implic-itly or explicitly indicates to himself that the victim is an extremely evil or malicious person. Finally, by making further self-indications from the same attitude of his generalized other, the perpetrator implicitly or explicitly indicates to himself that he ought to respond violently toward the victim and calls out within himself a violent plan of action. The perpetrator forms his violent plan of action because he sees violence as the most fitting way of handling evil or malicious people who make derogatory gestures. The key feature of all malefic interpretations is that the perpetrator judges the victim to be extremely evil or malicious, which in turn ignites his hatred for the victim. (1997, 38-39)

Frustrative-malefic interpretations are [also] formed in a three-step process. First, by assuming the attitude of the victim, the perpetrator implicitly or explicitly indicates to himself that the victim’s gestures mean either that the victim is resisting some specific line of action that the perpetrator wants to carry out or that he wants the perpetrator to




cooperate in some specific line of action that the perpetrator does not want carried out. Second, by assuming an attitude of his generalized other, the perpetrator implicitly or explicitly indicates to himself that the victim’s gestures are irksome or malicious and consequently that the victim is evil or malicious. Finally, by making further self-indica-tions from the same attitude of his generalized other, the perpetrator implicitly or explicitly indicates to himself that he ought to respond violently toward the victim and calls out within himself a violent plan of action. The perpetrator forms this violent plan of action because he sees violence as the most appropriate way to deal with an evil or mali-cious person’s potential or attempted blockage of the larger act that he seeks to carry out or as the most appropriate way to block the larger act that an evil or malicious person wants to carry out. The perpetrator views the victim not only as an adversary but as a particularly loath-some one as well. The mark of all frustrative-malefic interpretations is that they start out as frustrative interpretations. Before the perpetra-tor mounts his violent attack, however, the interpretations become malefic, with pure hatred always displacing the anger that the perpe-trator earlier felt toward his victim. (1997, 40)

In my main study, I (1997, 42-43) not only reinspected all my notes on how my participants in it and in my preliminary study interpreted situations in which they had committed violent crimes but also inspected my notes on how my participants in my main study interpreted the situations in which they nearly committed violent crimes. I did this by constantly comparing their accounts of the situations in which they had almost committed violent criminal acts against their accounts of the situations in which they had actu-ally committed them. More specifically, I compared the physically defen-sive, pure frustrative, pure malefic, and frustrative-malefic interpretations that my present participants had formed in completed violent situations to those that they had formed in near-violent situations.

I initially ascertained from my comparison of their interpretations formed in near-violent situations against those that they formed in completed vio-lent situations that the occurrence of two possible events determined whether people commit violent criminal acts. The first event, which I termed a “fixed line of indication,” occurs when people continue to “call out within themselves” a violent plan of action until they physically attacked their antagonist. After forming a violent interpretation, they failed to con-sider anything else in the situation beside acting violently, thereby falling prey to “tunnel vision.” Here, they either immediately carried out their vio-lent plans of action or further nurtured them along by continuing to assume



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the same proviolent attitude of their generalized other and to tell themselves that they ought to physically attack the victim until they carried out their violent plans of action.

The second event that I found that determines whether people commit a violent criminal act is the occurrence of a “restraining judgment.” People form restraining judgments when they break out of their fixed lines of indi-cation. After escaping from their “tunnel vision,” they decide now that they should not carry out the violent plan of action that they had earlier formed. My constant comparison of my participants’ accounts of these near violent situations revealed several different types of reasons for them forming restraining judgments. One of the most prevalent reasons that they formed restraining judgments in these situations is because the other person had suddenly changed his or her offensive actions. By assuming the attitude of the intended victim, they tell themselves that their intended victim’s threat-ening, malicious, or frustrating actions have been halted or significantly altered to make them less offensive. Next, by assuming the attitude of their generalized other, they now tell themselves that the execution of their vio-lent plan of action is no longer needed.

While reinspecting my notes on the completed violent interpretations that the participants in both my preliminary and main study formed, I unfor-tunately came across negative cases. I found participants who had formed violent interpretations of the situation and later formed restraining judg-ments. Despite forming restraining judgments, however, they decided sub-sequently to commit violent criminal acts. My discovery of these negative instances left me once again with two options: I could revise either my con-ception of the events that determine whether people carry out their violent interpretations or else my conception of the problem of violent crime, so that these negative cases could be eliminated from my study’s purview. Because I had no grounds for eliminating these cases from the purview of my study, the only real option left open to me was to enlarge my conception of the events responsible for whether people carry out their violent interpre-tations of situations.

I (1997, 50-52) determined from my constant comparison of these negative cases that there was another possible event in addition to fixed lines of indica-tion and restraining judgments that needed to be included in this decision-making process. I termed this third event an “overriding judgment.” I found that people formed overriding judgment when they broke out of their earlier fixed lines of indication and formed restraining judgments only to fall prey to their tunnel vision once again. I also found that the primary reason that people form overriding judgments is because they judge their victims’ conduct to have become intolerable. By assuming the attitude of their intended victim,




they tell themselves that the victim is resuming his physically threatening, frustrating, or malicious course of action. Then, by assuming the attitude of their generalized other, they tell themselves that they now should go ahead and carry out their violent plans of action because their intended victim’s conduct has now reached the point that it can no longer be endured. With the addition of my notion of overriding judgments, I could now explain when violent interpretations of the situations do and do not end in the commission of violent criminal acts in all the violent accounts described to me by my participants in both my preliminary and main studies.

Next, I inspected the self-images of the participants in my main study. As will be recalled from my preliminary study, I had determined that their self-portraits fell into only two distinct polar types: violent and nonviolent. While examining my notes on the self-portraits of my new participants, however, I quickly found some negative instances, which, no matter how hard I tried, I could not force into my two previous polar types. Instead of fitting comfortably under the nonviolent or violent types, they fell some-where in between the two. Although I constantly compared these negative instances against one another, I had great difficulty in pinpointing what made them different from my other two types until it suddenly occurred to me to look at my types of self-images in dynamic rather than static terms. It was only then that it finally struck me that this new third type of self-image was an “incipiently violent one.” By constantly comparing the concrete instances of this new type of self-image against one another, I sifted out what appeared to me to be its common defining characteristics.

After engaging in the same kind of constant comparisons of instances of the two previous types of self-images in both my main and preliminary studies, I sharpened my conceptions of them as well. The most important thing that I discovered from making these comparisons was that my partici-pants’ performance of conventional or deviant roles was not always a criti-cal factor in distinguishing their self portraits from each other as I earlier had mistakenly concluded from my preliminary study. With completion of this job, I (1997, 54-60) had now developed a new typology under which all sixty of my participants’ self-images could be comfortably subsumed:

Violent self-images have two hallmarks. First, the actors are seen by others and see themselves as having a violent disposition, that is, a willingness or readiness to attack other people physically with the intention of seriously harming them. Second, the actors are seen by others and see themselves as having violence-related personal attri-butes (such as being mean, ill-tempered, hotheaded, coldhearted, explosive, or forceful) as a salient characteristic. (1997, 54)



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Incipiently violent self-images have two hallmarks, one of which they share with violent self-images and the other of which they do not. First, as in the case of violent self-images, the individuals are seen by others and see themselves as having violence-related per-sonal attributes as a salient characteristic. In contrast to people with violent self-images, however, these individuals are seen by others and see themselves as having an incipiently violent disposition, that is only a willingness or readiness to make serious threats of violence, such as violent ultimatums and menacing physical gestures, toward other people. The essential difference between violent self-images and incipiently violent ones is that in the former the individual is viewed by others and views himself as definitely and genuinely being violent, whereas in the latter this is still highly problematic. Neither the individual nor others have determined with any certainty whether he may be “more show than go.” Thus the verdict of others, and of the person himself, remains out with regard to his true violence potential. (1997, 57-58)

Non-violent self images are marked more by what is absent than by what is present. The people are not seen by others and do not see them-selves as having violent or an incipiently violent disposition. They fur-thermore are not seen by others and do not see themselves as having violence-related personal attributes as a salient characteristic. To the contrary, in these self-images the people are seen by others and see themselves as having as their salient characteristics a blend of both positive and negative—although all nonviolence related—personal attributes, such as good-humored or dour, outgoing or shy, lazy or industrious, personable or boring, obnoxious or polite, ugly or attrac-tive, smart or stupid, and so on. Unsurprisingly this was the rarest of the types of self-images found among the violent offenders. (1997, 58-59)

Before inspecting the relationship between the self-portraits of the partici-pants in my main study and their violent interpretations, I turned my atten-tion back to the truth table for which I had already filled-in all the information needed on the twenty-three participants in my preliminary study. I needed to add the information that I now had on hand for the thirty-seven new par-ticipants in my main study. At this point, I had information on my new participants’ violent interpretations and self-images although not yet for the relationship that existed between them. Of course, the main reason that I constructed a truth table in the first place was to help make the determina-tion of this relationship easier for me.




Before I had even finished filling this new information in the table, how-ever, I knew that the relationship that I had developed earlier in my prelimi-nary study would not work for the participants in my main study because of my earlier discovery of a new type of self-portrait, an incipiently violent one. My examination of the truth table revealed that the participants who held incipiently violent images committed violent criminal acts only in situ-ations in which they formed either physically defensive or frustrative-malefic interpretations. Despite this new complication, however, the modifications that I now needed to make in the relationship that I had earlier found between my participants’ violent interpretations and self-images quickly became apparent to me from looking at my truth table. Luckily, all that was required for me to do to devise a new invariant relationship between my participants’ self-images and their violent interpretations of situations was to make some relatively minor modifications in the earlier relationship:

More fully, individuals who held nonviolent self-images committed their violent criminal acts only in situations in which they formed physically defensive interpretations. Those holding incipiently vio-lent self-images committed their violent criminal acts only in situa-tions in which they formed physically defensive interpretations or frustrative-malefic ones. Finally, those holding violent self-images committed violent criminal acts in situations in which they formed malefic, frustrative, frustrative-malefic, or physically defensive inter-pretations. (1997, 61)

Although thanks to my use of a truth table the task of devising a new invariant relationship between my participants’ self-images and violent interpretations of situations to replace my former one proved relatively easy, there remained a much harder task for me to perform. I discovered that it is one thing to describe a relationship between ideas whereas it is another to explain why the particular relationship described between them exists. After desperately searching for the answer to this question, it finally hit me. People’s self-images are generally consistent with their interpretations of situations because they usually judge the situations that confront them and other people’s opinions of them from the same attitude of their generalized other and thereby use the same consulting board’s yardstick in judging both of them. Although I had introduced Mead’s notion of the “generalized other” in my main study (Athens 1980), I used it only as a stopgap measure until I could later come up with a better idea myself. Among my long-held



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misgiving about Mead’s notion of the generalized other was that he views it as usually operating consciously and thereby explicitly in the interpretative process when, in fact, it usually operates unconsciously and, thereby, implic-itly in this process (Athens 2007b). Because we ordinarily take for granted the attitude of the community from which we judge ourselves and the situ-ations that confront us in our everyday lives, I (1997, 139) was later forced to replace Mead’s notion of the generalized other with my (1994, 525-30) new notion of the “phantom community.” Unlike the generalized other, a phantom community refers to the audience of real or imaginary people whose conception or picture of communal life, especially our and other people’s place in it, we always hold close to our hearts and usually take for granted (Athens 2007b, 150).

Finally, I inspected the interview notes that I had taken on the violent careers of the participants in my main study. Unfortunately, because of space limita-tions, I will not be able to describe here my inspection of all the notes that I had taken on my participants’ violent careers (see Athens 1997, 69-97, 137-43), but only those on the violent criminal acts that they had committed. Using the ear-lier crude distinction that I had drawn during my preliminary study as my start-ing point, I sorted the violent crimes that these participants had committed over their lives into “petty Annie bullshit” and “coping a feel” and “fucking people up bad” and “botty robbing.” By constantly comparing the violent criminal acts that I had placed into each one of these two crude categories against each other, I sifted out their different respective defining characteristics and renamed them “unsubstantial” and “substantial” violent criminal acts. After several revisions of my definitions of substantial and unsubstantial violent acts to take into account numerous negative instances, I (1997, 70) finally devised a twofold classification of violent criminal acts under which I could subsume all the vio-lent crimes that all my participants, including those in my preliminary study, described committing:

Substantially violent acts have either of two qualities. (1) The perpe-trator inflicted a substantial physical injury; that is, he deliberately injured the victim either fatally or to a degree that usually calls for a physician’s attention, such as results from a shooting, stabbing, club-bing, or relentless beating. (2) The perpetrator substantially sexually violated the victim, as in the case of coitus, sodomy, fellatio, or cun-nilingus under either the threat of substantial physical injury or the infliction of substantial or unsubstantial physical injury. (1997, 70)

Unsubstantially violent acts have either of three qualities. (1) The perpetrator inflicted unsubstantially physical injury; that is he delib-erately injured the victim to a degree that usually does not call for a




physician’s attention, such as results from being slapped, back-handed, pushed, or mildly punched, choked, or kicked. (2) The per-petrator unsubstantially sexually violated the victim; that is, he violated her to a degree short of coitus, sodomy, fellatio, or cunnilin-gus. (3) The perpetrator did not inflict substantial physical injury but did seriously threaten the victim with such injury, as in the case of verbally threatening to injure someone while displaying or discharg-ing a dangerous weapon when substantial sexual violation does not take place. (1997, 70)

On the basis of this new, more refined distinction of violent criminal acts, I (1997, 31) restricted my problem and thereby the explanation that I developed in my research project to substantial violent criminal acts and those who commit them.2

Confirmation StageBy using Blumer’s method of naturalistic inquiry, I developed what is popu-larly known as a “grounded theory” of violent criminal action. The entire theory, except for the part dealing with violent criminal careers, which I skipped over to save space, can be stated in terms of seven propositions.

Proposition 1: Individuals commit substantial violent criminal acts only after they form one of four types of violent interpretations of the situations that confront them: physically defensive, frustrative, malefic, or frustrative-malefic ones.

Proposition 2: Whether these individuals carry out one of these vio-lent interpretations depends on whether they stay in a fixed line of indication or form a restraining or overriding judgment. They will commit violent criminal acts in the first and third cases, but not in the second case, which is the most frequent.

Proposition 3: Individuals who commit substantial violent criminal acts display one of three types of self-images: violent, incipiently violent, and nonviolent.

Proposition 4: The types of self-images that people hold are always congruent with the types of interpretations that they form of the situations in which they commit substantive violent criminal acts—that is, people who hold nonviolent self-images will commit substantial violent criminal acts only in situations in which they



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form physically defensive interpretations. Those holding incipi-ently violent self-images will commit violent criminal acts only in situations in which they form physically defensive or frustrative-malefic interpretations. Finally, those holding violent self-images will commit substantial violent criminal acts in situations in which they form physically defensive or any one of the three offensive interpretations.

Proposition 5: People who commit substantial violent criminal acts have one of three different kinds of phantom communities: unmit-igated violent, mitigated violent, or nonviolent.

Proposition 6: People who hold violent self-images have an unmiti-gated violent phantom community—an “other” that provides them with pronounced and categorical support for acting violently toward other people. Those who hold incipiently violent self-images have a mitigated violent phantom community—an “other” providing them with pronounced, but limited, categorical support for acting vio-lently toward other people. Finally, those who hold nonviolent self-images have a nonviolent phantom community—an “other” that does not provide them with any pronounced, categorical moral sup-port for acting violently toward other people, except in the case of defending themselves or intimates from physical attack.

Proposition 7: It is the members of our corporal communities with violent phantom communities who are responsible for our violent crime problem: not only do they commit the vast majority of sub-stantial violent criminal acts, but even as victims they often pre-cipitate those that they do not commit.3

Discussion: Exposing Some Popular Myths about Naturalistic Inquiry and Grounded TheoriesMy statement of the propositions that compose the grounded theory of vio-lent criminal action that I developed from using the method of naturalistic inquiry presents an opportune occasion to expose three prevalent and perni-cious myths about both grounded theory and naturalistic inquiry. The first one is that the constant comparative method, as originally developed in the works of Glaser and Strauss (Glaser 1965, 1978; Glaser and Strauss 1967; Strauss 1987) and later elaborated with the help of their students (Strauss and Corbin 1990), is synonymous with grounded theory. A grounded theory is one that starts and ends in close touch with the individuals’ experiences that it purports to explain. As the propositions earlier described hopefully




demonstrate, naturalistic inquiry also provides a method for generating grounded theories. Moreover, the recognition of the need to develop grounded theories in social sciences did not start with Glaser and Strauss but, in fact, dates at least as far back as forty-five years earlier with Mead (1932, 165, emphasis added):

The human experience with which social science occupies itself is primarily that of individuals. It is only so far as the happenings, the environmental conditions, the values, their uniformities and laws enter into the experience of individuals as individuals that they become the subject of consideration by these sciences. Environmental conditions, for example, exists only in so far as they affect actual individuals and only as they affect these individuals. . . . Furthermore, the import of these happenings and these values must be found in the experiences of these individuals if they are to exist for these sciences at all.

The second all-too prevalent and pernicious myth is that Glaser and Strauss’s version of the constant comparison method is, for all intents and purposes, the same as Blumer’s method of naturalistic inquiry (see, e.g., Denzin 1989, 70; Hammersely 1989, 177; Maines 1988, 55). If Blumer had held this belief, however, then he (1969, 1979) would obviously have not felt compelled to develop his alternative method of naturalistic inquiry. It should be noted that Blumer had read and commented on Glaser and Strauss’s (1967, ix) The Discovery of Grounded Theory not only before it was published but also, more importantly for our present argument, before he (1969, 1-60) had published his statement on naturalistic inquiry two years later. Although Blumer long advocated developing grounded theories in the social sciences, the particular means that he preferred for their devel-opment was naturalistic inquiry, not constant comparison.

The third widespread and pernicious myth is that the designation of a theory as “grounded” is warranted solely on the bases of the method of the data collection that researchers used in conducting their studies. Thus, if methods, such as participant observation or life histories, were used in a study, then researchers can automatically claim that their theory was grounded. For a theory to warrant this designation, however, researchers must offer some proof beyond merely the data collection technique that they used to support that the theory that they subsequently developed was grounded. It is one thing to say that you interviewed or observed x number of people or groups for so long a time and quite another to say that from your observation or interviewing of them you did not find any evidence



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contracting any of the propositions on which your theory is based and to provide data supporting your claim.

A fourth and final prevalent and pernicious myth is that the inherent nature of the procedures composing naturalistic inquiry prevents its use in large-scale studies, so that the confirmation of the grounded theories that are developed from its use usually rests on a relatively very small number of cases. Whether we like it or not, for a theory to receive a fair hearing in the intellectual marketplace today, it usually requires independent confir-mation in studies conducted on large samples of individuals or groups. Although as presently conceived naturalistic inquiry admittedly suffers from this shortcoming, its design can be easily altered, so that this criticism is no longer applicable to it.

Specially designed naturalistic studies can be conducted exclusively for the purpose of verification rather than for both the purposes of discovery and verification, which for lack of a better term we may call naturalistic verifica-tion studies. In these naturalistic studies, researchers would not be required to waste their time trying to reinvent the wheel, and, thereby, they could skip the stages of exploration and inspection and move directly onto the stage of con-firmation where they could then concentrate all their efforts. Although the goal of these expedited naturalistic studies would be to provide further verifi-cation of an already existing grounded theory using a large number of partici-pants, they would be still required to use data collection techniques, such as participant observation and life histories, that avoid as much as is possible violating the natural integrity of the problem under study while still allowing for the theory to be tested on a much larger scale than was done in the original naturalistic study in which the theory was generated. However, during expe-dited naturalistic investigations, the information gathered from using these techniques would be merely recorded on predeveloped checklists, thereby sparing researchers from the time-consuming and energy-draining job of tak-ing lengthy, detailed field notes. Moreover, statistical methods, which are especially designed for use in conjunction with so-called nominal variables, such as property space analysis and Boolean analysis, could be used to make the analysis of the data collected from administering such checklists to large samples of participants much easier and quicker than would be otherwise pos-sible (see Becker 1998, 164-214; Ragin 1994, 112-30).

ConclusionPark laid the foundation for naturalistic inquiry by not only criticizing posi-tivism in the early stages of its development in sociology but also providing




various methodological directives for carrying out sociological research. Blumer not only extended and refined Park’s critique of positivism but also created from Park’s methodological directives naturalistic inquiry as an alternative methodology to positivism for conducting sociological research. Although Blumer (1928, 1930/1969, 1940/1969, 1954/1969, 1969, 1979, 1980) dedicated a large chunk of his career to trying to work out the proce-dures for naturalistic inquiry, he unfortunately was never able to finish the job (Athens 1984, 251-55). He identified two of its essential stages, but he never sufficiently described either one of them. He also failed to include as a separate stage confirmation. Finally, he made the mistake of presuming that a naturalistic study was a zero-sum proposition, so that you either respected or violated the natural integrity of the problem under study when, in actuality, it is always a matter of degree (Athens 1984, 255; Matza 1969, 9). Although we must always strive to gather the data for our studies as naturalistically as is possible given the problem under study, we must recognize that conducting a study that perfectly attains this goal is impossible.

By directly building on Park and Blumer’s work, I further elaborated the method of naturalistic inquiry in two ways. First, in line with Park’s call for the testing of theories, I added the new stage of confirmation to the two stages that Blumer had earlier identified, so that the method now has three rather than only two stages: (1) exploration, (2) inspection, and (3) confir-mation. I also added further vital details about carrying out Blumer’s two earlier stages of exploration and inspection, such as constructing truth tables during the inspection stage. Since a description of how a logical procedure has actually been used in practice is usually more informative than merely a description of its use in theory, I also provided a detailed illustration of the use of this new three-stage model of naturalistic inquiry as a logic in use with two early studies that I conducted on violent criminal acts and actors. Finally, I exposed various myths surrounding the use of the method of natu-ralistic inquiry and the grounded theories produced from using it in socio-logical research.

As described here, the method of naturalistic inquiry occupies a rela-tively unique position in the social sciences because it is holistic rather than dualistic in nature. My admittedly bold assertion rests on three facts. First, it combines the use of constant comparative method with the use of the method of negative analysis into a single integrated method of analysis rather than separates them as the two mentioned methods do. Second, natu-ralistic inquiry combines rather than separates theoretical perspectives with the research methods used in a study, ensuring that the two remain in close



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touch with one another. Thus, the old charge that naturalistic inquiry is inherently atheoretical is based on a lack of proper understanding of the origin and actual operation of the method (Huber 1973), although in light of the earlier inadequate statements of the method it is easy to understand how someone could draw this erroneous conclusion. Finally, naturalistic inquiry does not separate the operation of values in our everyday lives from their operation in our scientific investigations—values affect all our actions, so that the term value-free research is an oxymoron. Although it is impossible to conduct value-free research, it is possible to conduct nonpartisan natural-istic research. Unlike so-called “value-free” research, nonpartisan research is guided by the value of nonpartisanship and, thereby, is not value free (Mead 1917/1964, 208-10). Like any other value, nonpartisanship cannot be perfectly achieved.4

As far as future research is concerned, I believe that three things are needed. First, more instructions than those provided here would be probably helpful, especially for first-time users of naturalistic inquiry, for carrying out the stages of exploration, inspection, and confirmation. Second, there now exists a desperate need for us to conduct naturalistic verification stud-ies. We now have a growing backlog of grounded theories that are to some degree or another based on naturalistic studies that require independent test-ing if they are to receive a fairer hearing in the intellectual marketplace. In light of the unique context in which naturalistic studies are carried out, the idea of our conducting replication studies may be a waste of time and energy. Thus, to meet this need, it may be wiser if we conduct expedited naturalistic studies in which researchers skip the stages of exploration and inspection and move directly onto the confirmation stage where they could then devote all their efforts. Such expedited studies would not repre-sent a violation of the holistic nature of naturalistic inquiry because the theories tested were originally developed in naturalistic studies where the logic of discovery and the logic of verification were combined together rather than kept separated from one another.

Finally, since the methods of naturalistic inquiry, constant comparison, and negative case analysis are not exactly the same, more detailed compari-sons of their relative strengths and weaknesses would be beneficial, so potential users could take into account their pros and cons before selecting one method over the other for use in their studies. Just as all quantitative methods of data analysis, such as path analysis and analysis of variance, are not the same, all qualitative methods of data analysis are not either. Qualitative researchers need to become just as aware of the various nuisances involved in using different qualitative methods of data analysis as quantitative




researchers now are with respect to their different methods of data analysis. Sociologists have long been aware of the pros and cons of using different techniques of collecting qualitative data, such as life histories versus par-ticipant observation (see, e.g., Becker and Greer 1957, 1958; Trow 1957), and they need to develop the same degree of awareness in the selection of their methods of qualitative data analysis.

Author’s Note

I presented the section of this article on naturalistic inquiry as a logic in use at the Couch-Stone Symposium held at the University of Illinois, Urbana, in May 2008.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Antony Puddephatt for urging me to write a paper on how I used naturalistic inquiry in my study of “violent criminal acts and actors.” I would also like to thank Scott Hunt and Peter Kraska for pressing me later to revise my paper by expanding on Blumer’s original statement of the method based on my actual experience using it. The pointed questions that they all raised helped me fill many blank spots in my description of the method and much better organize my explanation of how I used it.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no conflicts of interest with respect to the authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research and/or authorship of this article.

Notes

1. In the case of a new research project on violent social action that I embarked on a few short years ago, I (Athens 2005) discovered that my reinspection of the information that I had gathered in two of my earlier studies (1974, 1980, 1997), which is later described here, yielded intellectual dividends far exceeding my greatest expectations.

2. Despite my best efforts at describing my use of the method of naturalistic inquiry in these two studies, however, there is no way with all the years that have now gone by that I could possibly provide a complete authoritative record of every-thing that I did and exactly how I did it when they were originally conducted. I (1974, 1977, 1980, 1985, 1997) spent endless hours working on it, and my work was spread out over many years. There is no doubt that I failed to include in



Athens 121

this account such things as all my various provisional classifications of the types of violent interpretations, self-images, violent criminal acts, and my dismissal of negative instances that at first seemed to contradict one of my formulations, but on closer examination later proved to be specious. Nevertheless, I hope that I have recalled enough of the critical details in my use of naturalistic inquiry to give some idea how the three stages of naturalistic inquiry are actually carried out.

3. Since I adopted Blumer’s (1997, 6) perspective of symbolic interactionism and method of naturalistic inquiry in carrying out this research, it seems only appro-priate to end my discussion of it with his opinion of my effort: “In my judgment, students in the social sciences in general and in criminology in particular will find the present work to be well worth their study and cogitation.” He said “it opens the door to a much-needed form of study in the grand task that confronts criminology.”

4. Although Ned Polsky (1967/1985, 139) did not distinguish between value-free and nonpartisan research as done here, he relevantly quipped with respect to the last point that some “apparently believe that because we cannot be virgin pure with respect to value-neutral social science we might as well be whores.” I would add that this criticism is not gender specific and, thereby, can be applied to both male and female sociologists.

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Bio

Lonnie Athens, who is a professor in Seton Hall University’s department of criminal justice, was the last student to complete his doctoral dissertation under Herbert Blumer’s direction. While a graduate student at Berkeley, he took four courses from Blumer, including his famous course on the “Logic and Methods of Qualitative Research.” Athens, a past president of the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction, was a recipient the society’s highest honor, the George Herbert Mead Award.



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