Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Strübing, Jörg

Titel

Anselm L. Strauss: Action/Work as Process and Perspective

Ist Teil von

• The Interactionist Imagination, 2017, p.263-289

Ort / Verlag

London: Palgrave Macmillan UK

Erscheinungsjahr

2017

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• The chapter sheds light on the theoretical works of Anselm L. Strauss. This American sociologist (1916–1996), already well-known as one of the founding fathers of Grounded Theory, is revealed to at the same time has been the key figure in re-aligning interactionist theory with pragmatist philosophy. His late theoretical writings, thoroughly grounded in decades of empirical studies on illness and healthcare, are structured by two core categories: process and perspective. Both are approached through focusing on action and work. Strauss shifted the Blumerian emphasis on symbolic interaction toward a more material view of sociality as situated activity, thereby blurring what he viewed as the artificial separation of action from structure. Strauss both established a strictly anti-dualistic view of the social and demonstrated how the dynamic tension between doubt and belief is the prime moving force of human activity. The conceptual groundwork laid by Strauss allows pragmatist interactionism to adequately engage poststructural challenges such as the participation of nonhuman entities in social activity and the importance of discourse as shaping situated action while also being shaped in these situations. In concluding, the article points to traces of his empirical and theoretical work in areas such as science and technology studies, gender studies and the sociology of health and illness.