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The Work Sites of an American Interactionist: Anselm L. Strauss, 1917–1996
Author(s) -
Baszanger Isabelle
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
symbolic interaction
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.874
H-Index - 47
eISSN - 1533-8665
pISSN - 0195-6086
DOI - 10.1525/si.1998.21.4.353
Subject(s) - sociology , action (physics) , situated , biography , epistemology , symbolic interactionism , interactionism , order (exchange) , psychoanalysis , space (punctuation) , social science , law , philosophy , psychology , political science , linguistics , physics , finance , quantum mechanics , artificial intelligence , computer science , economics
This article offers a situated overview of the work of Anselm Strauss. Beginning from its intellectual genesis at the University of Chicago with Blumer and Hughes, Strauss's creation of a sociology of action through concepts of routine and nonroutine action, negotiated order, social worlds, arenas, properties and kinds of work, and trajectory are examined. Strauss's ideas about medicine and chronic illness, psychiatric institutions, death and dying, awareness contexts, biography and trajectory are discussed. His profoundly innovative contributions to research methods, including grounded theory and the integration of structural elements through his conditional matrix, are also detailed. In conclusion, the ways in which Strauss himself framed the critical space of an interactionist sociologist are laid out through new interview materials.