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In the movie A Bronx Tale, a neighborhood teenager confronts the local organized crime kingpin. The meeting is the chance of a lifetime for this Italian aspirant. He asks earnestly and with rapacious eyes,“Is it better to be loved than feared?” From the Don’s answer, we find out that love may be desired, but fear is preferred. The question is instructive for those us—of various stripes and persuasions—who fight for space in that small craft called “qualitative sociology.” We are like that Italian teenager. We grope for a secure place in a field that looks upon us as the ugly stepchild, useful only for menial disciplinary labors: eg, committee work, signatories on large grant applications requiring “multi-method” commitments, and ‘special op/s’ storytellers sent to recover disaffected undergraduates who find little joy in our leading journals. 1 One need look no further than some my own writings to see that qualitative research has become uninspired.(If you doubt this, pick up an qualitative AJS article or ethnographic monograph; likely, the author will open with “what this paper will show.” Timid, feckless and feculent. Why read on?) With the exception of Howard Becker and Herb Gans, the rest of us rarely write with confidence and irreverence. Few of us know how to weave narrative and, like our quantitative counterparts, we rest on formulaic hermeneutics that challenge neither our readers nor us. We do not write with love for the messiness which surrounds, but with fear that the controlling voices of our discipline will strike us, yet again, with the all too-familiar quips:“How is this generalizable? Yes, but it is representative? What’s your ‘n’?” By failing to lead our …