Doing Modernity: Studies in Critical Interactionism

                           Auto-Ethnography as a Research Methodology in Critical Interactionism Wayne Martin Mellinger, Ph.D. Research, at its core, is a systematic process of inquiry—asking questions, gathering evidence, and constructing knowledge. In the social sciences, research seeks to illuminate the patterned regularities and contingencies of social life. For critical interactionists, research is not simply about description or prediction, but about revealing the mechanisms of domination and the emancipatory possibilities embedded in everyday life. It is an ethically charged activity, involving reflexivity, commitment to justice, and a methodological attentiveness to power, situated meanings, and the interactional production of social order. Sociological social psychology has traditionally employed a variety of methods. Quantitative survey research, experiments, and structured interviews are commonly ...

  Book Prospectus Title: Doing Modernity: Using Critical Interactionism to Study Everyday Life Author: Wayne Martin Mellinger, PhD Book Overview: Doing Modernity: Using Critical Interactionism to Study Everyday Life is a vital intervention in contemporary sociology, offering a groundbreaking vision of what it means to study social life from below. Synthesizing symbolic interactionism, ethnomethodology, critical theory, and autoethnography, this book presents a unique approach to social psychology that foregrounds the micro-level enactment of power, inequality, and meaning in everyday encounters. In this collection of 34 chapters, each originally crafted as a blog post, Dr. Mellinger builds a multi-layered sociology that bridges lived experience and structural critique, theory and action, biography and history.   The book unfolds as both a theoretical manifesto and an accessible teaching tool. From foundational discussions of the interaction order to explorations of shame, raci...