The Hughesian Legacy: William Shaffir—A Principal Interpreter of the Chicago School Diaspora in Canada

Abstract

<jats:p>In this paper, I discuss the invaluable role played by William Shaffir, my mentor and doc­toral supervisor, who shaped my approach to interpretive fieldwork and deepened my understanding of symbolic interactionist theory. Known affectionately as Billy to his colleagues and students, Shaffir is a gifted educator and one of the finest ethnographic researchers of his generation. My focus is on how the scholarly tradition that flows from Georg Simmel through Robert Park, Herbert Blumer, and Everett C. Hughes, passed from Billy on to me, is illustrative of what Low and Bowden (2013) conceptualize as the Chicago School Diaspora. This concept does not refer to the scattering of a people, but rather to how key ideas and symbolic representations of key figures associated with the Chicago School have been tak­en up by those who themselves are not directly affiliated with the University of Chicago. In this regard, while not a key figure of the Chicago School himself, Shaffir stands at the boundary between the Chica­go School of sociology and scholars with no official relationship to the School. As such he is a principal interpreter of the Chicago School Diaspora in Canadian Sociology.</jats:p>

An Embattled Yet Enduring Influence: Introduction to a Special Issue on Blumerian Symbolic Interactionism

“…The conceptualization and naming of a perspective, however, does little if it is not picked up and carried forward by others. Thus, it is consequential that those whose approaches to sociological research were strongly influenced by Blumer include sociological luminaries, all of whom, in turn, have passed on interactionist insights to successive generations (Denzin 1990; Glass 1987; La Violette 1972; Low 2017, 2019a, 2020). 5 Among these, Davis (2017:145) lists: “Everett C. Hughes…Howard Becker, Erving Goffman, Tamotsu Shibutani and Anselm Strauss.” To these we add Gary Alan Fine, Robert Prus, Kathy Charmaz, and William Shaffir 6…”