Richard Mitchell

CONTEMPORARY THINKERS AND TOPICS
IN SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM

Richard Mitchell

Richard Mitchell, a professor at Oregon State University in the department of sociology, received his PhD from the University of Southern California in 1979. Currently, Professor Mitchell's research interests include criminology, deviance, the sociology of small groups, leisure and popular culture and qualitative sociology. His many specializations include social psychology, ethics, corrections and interpretive sociology.

Among his many publications is Dancing at Armageddon: Survivalism and Chaos in Modern Times. A qualitative and field researcher to the core, Mitchell spent twelve years among survivalists at public conferences, private meetings, and clandestine training camps all across America. The premise of this book is that survivalists are not crazy or dangerous. Rather they are members of the population from which they are drawn: a sick society. They are rational members of an irrational society. This was a revision of psychologist Thomas Szasz's theory that there is no mental illness, only a sick society. This adds to the idea that reality is socially constructed and there are those who are in powerful positions that are able to manipulate public conceptions about certain groups of people, survivalists included.

Mitchell's other contributions to symbolic interaction include Secrecy and Fieldwork: Revelation and Concealment in Post-Modern Ethnography, Exploring Society: Selected Readings in Sociology and Mountain Experience: The Psychology and Sociology of Adventure. Mitchell has been recognized for his contribution to the ethics of risky qualitative research in terms of secrecy and when it is limiting to the researcher.
For more information on the above, see:

http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0314/p19s02-bogn.html
http://oregonstate.edu/dept/sociology/rmvita.htm


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CONTEMPORARY THINKERS AND TOPICS IN SYMBOLIC INTERACTIONISM Richard Mitchell Richard Mitchell, a professor at Oregon State University in the department of sociology, received his PhD from the University of Southern California in 1979. Currently, Professor Mitchell's research interests include criminology, deviance, the sociology of small groups, leisure and popular culture and qualitative sociology. His many specializations include social psychology, ethics, corrections and interpretive sociology. Among his many publications is Dancing at Armageddon: Survivalism and Chaos in Modern Times. A qualitative and field researcher to the core, Mitchell spent twelve years among survivalists at public conferences, private meetings, and clandestine training camps all across America. The premise of this book is that survivalists are not crazy or dangerous. Rather they are members of the population from which they are drawn: a sick society. They are rational members of an irrational society. This was a revision of psychologist Thomas Szasz's theory that there is no mental illness, only a sick society. This adds to the idea that reality is socially constructed and there are those who are in powerful positions that are able to manipulate public conceptions about certain groups of people, survivalists included. Mitchell's other contributions to symbolic interaction include Secrecy and Fieldwork: Revelation and Concealment in Post-Modern Ethnography, Exploring Society: Selected Readings in Sociology and Mountain Experience: The Psychology and Sociology of Adventure. Mitchell has been recognized for his contribution to the ethics of risky qualitative research in terms of secrecy and when it is limiting to the researcher. For more information on the above, see: http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0314/p19s02-bogn.html http://oregonstate.edu/dept/sociology/rmvita.htm