Anselm Strauss

Strauss, whose grandparents had emigrated from Germany to the U.S., grew up in Mount Vernon. He studied at the University of Virginia and received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, where he had taught Herbert Blumer symbolic interactionism.

Strauss has published numerous contributions to medical sociology. Along with Barney Glaser, he developed in the 1960s to the grounded theory approach.

Scientific Work

Strauss, a student of Herbert Blumer on the Chicago School and staff of Everett C. Hughes, already published early work on social psychology in the tradition of George Herbert Mead. In the 1960s, he became known for his empirical studies of hospital death and dying internationally as a medical sociologist and developed at the same time together with B. Glaser research grounded theory in interpretive social research.

Strauss 's most important contribution to the development of interactionist social theory is to overcome the declining Blumer on social psychological constriction of interactionism. By drawing on the symbolic interactionism insufficiently rezipierte elements pragmatist social philosophy and epistemology (Charles S. Peirce, John Dewey, William James, George Herbert Mead ), he comes to a stronger emphasis on perspectivism and processual nature of sociality, and also adopt the materiality of body and environment explicitly with a. Under the influence of work and organizational sociological perspective on Hughes ' ​​Strauss opened interactionism also more structural aspects of sociality. His successively developed on the basis of a large number of empirical studies and only in 1993 coherently formulated interactionist theory of action is based on the basic idea of the production of social structures in ongoing negotiation processes ( negotiated order, processual ordering ) between actors as representatives of social worlds ( theory of social worlds). This approach proves particularly for connection for the science and technology research, organizational sociology as well as the medical, health and social work research.

Curriculum vitae

Publications

• Social Psychology ( m. Alfred Lindesmith ), 1956 ( Eng.: Symbolic terms of socialization, 1974)
• Mirrors and masks 1959 (German: Mirrors and Masks, 1968)
• Negotiations: Varieties, Processes, Contexts, and Social Order, 1978
• The Social Organization of Medical Work ( m. others ), 1985
• Qualitative Analysis for Social Scientists, 1987 ( Eng.: Basics of qualitative research: data analysis and theory in empirical sociological research, 1991)
• Basics of Qualitative Research: Grounded Theory Procedures and Techniques ( m. Juliet Corbin ), 1990 ( Eng.:. Grounded Theory Basics Qualitative Social Research, 1996)
• Continual Permutations of Action, 1993