John Franklin Lofland
Entering Cohort: 1960
Professor Emeritus, University of California, Davis
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I was a graduate student in sociology at Berkeley from 1960 to1964. My major mentors were Erving Goffman, Herbert Blumer, Neil Smelser and Phillip Selznick. Together with Morris Zelditch, with whom I studied at Columbia the prior two years, these five, and the intellectual currents they embodied, inspired me to engage in three kinds of sociological work in subsequent years: field study, research synthesis, and research methodology.
1. These mentors were advocates of field study in the sense of intensive and long-term observation in a natural setting, an activity I have ventured once a decade: ? the Unification Church of the 1960s (Doomsday Cult, 1966, enlarged edition 1977), ? protests at the California Capital in the 1970s (Crowd Lobbying, 1982; Symbolic Sit-ins, with Roger Finke, 1982), ? the American peace movement of the 1980s (Polite Protesters, 1993), and, ? Davis, California in the 1990s (and historically) (books listed below).
2. Inspired by their works that sought to make overall sense out of an inchoate array of disparate studies, I have attempted such research synthesis on: ? deviance (Deviance and identity, assisted by Lyn H. Lofland, 1969, republished 2002), ? social interaction in natural settings (Doing Social Life, 1976), ? formal organizational aspects of social movements (Social Movement Organizations, (1996), and, ? some other topics (for which the papers are assembled in my collected studies titled Protest, 1985).
3. Hoping to strengthen sociological field studies, in the late 1960s and early 1970s I was the founding editor of the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography (1971?continuing). For the same reason, I also wrote Analyzing Social Settings (1971), a primer on how to do field studies. Lyn Lofland and I co-authored the second (1984) and third (1995) editions, both of which were extensive revisions. David Snow and Leon Anderson have became the lead authors of the fourth??the 2005??edition, which is once more extensively revised.
Over the past decade or so, my main scholarly work has been on aspects of local history and historic preservation, especially as these are displayed in Davis, California. My publications on these topics have included: ? Davis: Radical Changes, Deep Constants (2004), ? Davis, California, 1910s-1940s (with Phyllis Haig, 2000), ? Demolishing a Historic Hotel (2003), and, ? Old North Davis (1999).
On the surface, this recent body of work may seem a departure from the past, but it is not. Although the substance is different, this effort involves field study, research synthesis, and innovation in research methods.
Erving Goffman once remarked, seemingly about himself, "You get your best ideas when you are young and you spend the rest of your life working them out." He was right about himself??and also about me.
Dissertation: The World-Savers: A Field Study of Cult Processes