Conversation with Herbert Blumer: II *

During the academic year 1977–1978, Professor Herbert Blumer sponsored Drs. Thomas J. Morrione and Harvey A. Farberman as Visiting Scholars in the sociology department of the University of California at Berkeley. In Fall Quarter of 1977, Morrione and Farberman attended Blumer's class and taped and transcribed six of the ten lecture/discussions. The transcripts were reviewed during Winter Quarter and questions, in writing, were prepared and delivered to Blumer for subsequent exploration. In Spring Quarter of 1978, Blumer, Morrione, and Farberman met four times (for a total of about 20 hours) to discuss these questions. A 232 page typescript was produced from recordings of these sessions. A year later, in Spring Quarter of 1979, Blumer again gave his course in Symbolic Interaction (for the last time at Berkeley) and Farberman again taped them. In the Fall of 1979, prior to editing the 232 page typescript, Morrione and Farberman reviewed the tapes of Blumer's Fall 1977 and Spring 1979 classes and settled on an editorial strategy. Initially, two strategies were considered: a fairly straight forward chronology or an analytical reconstruction. Both had advantages and disadvantages. The first captures the informal, spontaneous, dialogical quality of purposeful conversation; but, it contains an abundance of false starts, convoluted sentences, mixed metaphors, leaps of logic, off‐color remarks and, most especially—redundancy. The second offers a set of key notions adduced from the narrative that reflect, what the participants wish to focus on but clearly is an abridged version. Following a series of conversations with Peter M. Hall (then) Editor of Symbolic Interaction , it became clear that, publication of the material presupposed journal length segments of 25–30 pages. As a practical matter, the editorial strategy became analytic reconstruction. After two passes at the material, Morrione and Farberman agreed to a scheme that seemed most effective in organizing and containing all the key material. This scheme breaks the material into two manuscripts, one dealing with the nature of “self‐indication,” the other with the “moral dimensions of action and the ethical dimension of investigation.” To offset some of the pitfalls inherent in analytic reconstruction, Morrione and Farberman followed four rules: (1) each participant held a veto and nothing was finalized on any point under review, unless and until agreement was reached; (2) each segment (line, paragraph, or page), no matter where it appeared in the reconstruction, was identified by its page number in the original narrative; (3) each participant would retain a bound copy of the original unexpurgated transcripts and, where appropriate and with the others' permission, make it available for wider scholarly use; and (4) nothing would be published unless it was reviewed and approved by Herbert Blumer.