Stressing the importance of language, human groups and social interaction, this book presents a theoretical and empirical introduction to social psychology.

Social Psychology

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Strauss, Anselm L.

Denzin, Norman K.

Lindesmith, Alfred Ray

Psychology & Counseling

PRENTICE/HALL

The Contexts of Social Mobility: Ideology and Theory

Business & Money

Economics

Aldine Pub. Co.

Although it has not been his intention to promulgate theory for its own sake, Anselm Strauss has proven himself a formidable theorist. What has prompted this new treatise on human action (or as Strauss would prefer, acting) was a dissatisfaction with the accounts of social phenomena in the received, mainline sociological literature. Derived from the survey and functionalist traditions, such accounts have simplified complexities drastically, and mostly left implicit the underlying action assumptions of their research. Rejecting Parsons and Lazarsfeld as models, Strauss traces the perspective on human action presented in Continual Permutations of Action to a very different tradition, that of the Pragmatists. 
Strauss's account begins with the concept of trajectory, referring to a course of action but also embracing the interaction of multiple actors and contingencies. Certain Straussian terms and motifs come rapidly into play in the earlier sections, where' he maps out his account: conditional matrix, temporality, and the like. The later sections are given over to major topics, including work and its relations with other forms of action; the body; thought processes; symbolizing; social worlds and arenas; representation; the interplay of routine and creative action; and the relevance of the concept of social worlds to understanding the interplay of several levels of social order in contemporary society. 
Like Strauss's previous works, Continual Permutations of Action is richly grounded in case histories and biographical narratives that illustrate its points. He draws not only on the full range of the Chicago interactionist tradition, but oh the 'writing of his intellectual opponents, on personal correspondence, on autobiographical interludes, and on a wide range of non-sociological reading, from survivors' accounts of the concentration camps to Henry James and James Joyce. Extending the limits of interactionist theory, Strauss has raised questions about - interpreting social phenomena that will be debated for some time to come.

Continual Permutations of Action: Communication and Social Order

Aldine Transaction

Awareness of Dying

Should patients be told they are dying? How do families react when one of their members is facing death? Who should reveal that death is imminent? How does hospital staff—doctors, nurses, and attendants—act toward the dying patient and his family? Death, as a social ritual, is one of the great turning points in human existence, but prior to this classic work, it had been subjected to little scientific study. American perspectives on death seem strangely paradoxical—the brutal fact of death is confronted daily in our newspapers yet Americans are unwilling to talk openly about the process of dying itself. Awareness of Dying, using a highly original theory of awareness, examines the dying patient and those about him in social interaction, it gives us a language and tools of analysis for understanding who knows what about dying, under what circumstances, and what difference it makes. The authors use their finely detailed observations to develop theoretical constructs that will be of use in many other interactions and situations. Awareness of Dying was the first study of dying in hospitals, and has proven a useful handbook for chaplains, social workers, nurses, and doctors in confronting the many ethical and personal problems that arise in the dying situation. Now available in paperback, it is destined to reach new audiences interested in this key part of all life.

Glaser, Barney G.

Parenting & Relationships

Routledge

Social Psychology and Human Values: Documenting History, Charting Progress, and Exploring the World

Reflecting the contributions of M. Brewster Smith to social psychology and personality study, this selection includes not only his best known essays but also previously unpublished material. Professor Smith's consistent striving for a psychology both scientific and humane unifies the collection; it is a valid and valuable overview of the relevance of social psychology to human experience and societal problems by a man at the midstream of his career. An introductory essay traces the major themes in Professor Smith's work. Part I discusses the interdisciplinary relations of social psychology with other behavioral sciences; it shows that social psychology, standing at the crossroads of the social sciences, must articulate its contributions with those of the other disciplines, and it delineates the problems involved in this articulation. Part II presents the author's principal contributions to the social psychology of attitudes and values, a central topic in the field, in which he is a major proponent of the functional approach. Part III is devoted to the broader issues of personality theory, focusing on the "self" as the object of personal attitudes and including a classic paper on the phenomenological approach. Parts IV and V probe human effectiveness and "mental health," consider the social development of personal competence, and examine from a social psychological perspective a variety of social problems -foreign students and cross-cultural education, population growth, ethnic prejudice, and student protest. The final group of essays deals with perennial human concerns: the nature of rationality, the ethics of behavioral research, the psychology of literature, and the problems of evil.

Richard Bernstein expressed the view that pragmatism was ahead of its time; the same has been true of symbolic interactionism. These two closely related perspectives, one philosophical and the other sociological, place human action at the center of their explanatory schemes. It has not mattered what aspect of social or psychological behavior was under scrutiny. Whether selves, minds, or emotions, or institutions, social structures, or social change, all have been conceptualized as forms of human activity. This view is the simple genius of these perspectives. Anselm Strauss always took ideas pertaining to action and process seriously. Here he makes explicit the theory of action that implicitly guided his research for roughly forty years. It is understood that Strauss accepts the proposition that acting (or even better, interacting) causes social structure. He lays the basis for this idea in the nineteen assumptions he articulates early in the book--assumptions that elaborate and make clearer Herbert Blumer's famous premises of symbolic interactionism. The task Strauss put before himself is how to keep the complexity of human group life in front of the researcher/theorist and simultaneously articulate an analytical scheme that clarifies and reveals that complexity. With these two imperfectly related issues before him, Strauss outlines an analytical scheme of society in action. It is a scheme that rests not on logical necessity but on research and observation, and the concepts he uses are proposed because they do a certain amount of analytical work. One would be well advised to take Continual Permutations of Action very seriously.

Continual Permutations of Action

Politics & Social Sciences

Maines, David R.

Philosophy

The French writer Arnold van Gennep first called attention to the phenomena of status passages in his Rites of Passage one hundred years ago. In Status Passage, first published in 1971, the movement of individuals and groups in contemporary society from one status to another is examined in the light of Gennep's original theory. Glaser and Strauss demonstrate that society emerges as a comparative order. In this order, every organized action, collective or individual, can be seen as a form of status passage. From one status to another-from childhood to adolescence to adulthood, from being single to being married, movement from one income group, social class or religion to another-there are passages that entail movement into different parts of a social structure and loss or gain in privileges. Types of status passage are described by their proper ties. The authors present a formal theory of status passage in the form of a running theoretical discussion. The concepts and categories discussed in Status Passage are illuminated by a large number of examples chosen from a wide range of human behavior, and the applicability of the theory to still other examples is made apparent. The result is a stimulating and provocative book that will interest a wide range of sociologists, social psychologists, and other social scientists, and will be useful in a variety of courses.

Status Passage

Self-Help

Relationships

The teaching of qualitative analysis in the social sciences is rarely undertaken in a structured way. This handbook is designed to remedy that and to present students and researchers with a systematic method for interpreting qualitative data', whether derived from interviews, field notes, or documentary materials. The special emphasis of the book is on how to develop theory through qualitative analysis. The reader is provided with the tools for doing qualitative analysis, such as codes, memos, memo sequences, theoretical sampling and comparative analysis, and diagrams, all of which are abundantly illustrated by actual examples drawn from the author's own varied qualitative research and research consultations, as well as from his research seminars. Many of the procedural discussions are concluded with rules of thumb that can usefully guide the researchers' analytic operations. The difficulties that beginners encounter when doing qualitative analysis and the kinds of persistent questions they raise are also discussed, as is the problem of how to integrate analyses. In addition, there is a chapter on the teaching of qualitative analysis and the giving of useful advice during research consultations, and there is a discussion of the preparation of material for publication. The book has been written not only for sociologists but for all researchers in the social sciences and in such fields as education, public health, nursing, and administration who employ qualitative methods in their work.

Qualitative Analysis for Social Scientists

Social Sciences

Cambridge University Press

The teaching of qualitative analysis in the social sciences is rarely undertaken in a structured way. This handbook is designed to remedy that and to present students and researchers with a systematic method for interpreting qualitative data', whether derived from interviews, field notes, or documentary materials. The special emphasis of the book is on how to develop theory through qualitative analysis. The reader is provided with the tools for doing qualitative analysis, such as codes, memos, memo sequences, theoretical sampling and comparative analysis, and diagrams, all of which are abundantly illustrated by actual examples drawn from the author's own varied qualitative research and research consultations, as well as from his research seminars. Many of the procedural discussions are concluded with rules of thumb that can usefully guide the researchers' analytic operations. The difficulties that beginners encounter when doing qualitative analysis and the kinds of persistent questions they raise are also discussed, as is the problem of how to integrate analyses. In addition, there is a chapter on the teaching of qualitative analysis and the giving of useful advice during research consultations, and there is a discussion of the preparation of material for publication. The book has been written not only for sociologists but for all researchers in the social sciences and in such fields as education, public health, nursing, and administration who employ qualitative methods in their work.

  Identity as a concept is as elusive as everyone's sense of his own personal identity. It is connected with appraisals made by oneself and by others. Each person sees himself mirrored in the judgments of others. The masks he presents to the world are fashioned upon his anticipations of judgments. In Mirrors and Masks, Anselm Strauss uses the notion of identity to organize materials and thoughts about certain aspects of problems traditionally intriguing to social psychologists.   The problems Strauss considers to be intriguing traditionally are those encountered when studying group membership, motivation, personality development, and social interaction. The topics covered include: the basic importance of language for human action and identity; the perpetual indeterminacy of identities in constantly changing social contexts; the symbolic and developmental character of human interaction; the theme of identity as it affects adult behaviqr; relations between generations and their role in personality development; and the symbolic character of membership in groups.   By focusing on symbolic behavior with an emphasis on social organization, Strauss presents a fruitful, systematic perspective from which to view traditional problems of social psychology. He opens up new areas of thought and associates matters that are not ordinarily considered to be related. Strauss believes that psychiatrists* and psychologists underestimate immensely the influence of social organization upon individual behavior and individual structure, and that sociologists, whose major concern is with social organization, should employ some kind of social psychology in their research. Mirrors and Masks shows that the fusion of theoretical approaches benefits the analyses of many scholars. This fascinating work should be read by sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists, and psychiatrists.

Mirrors and Masks

Women's Studies

Sociology Pr

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Books by Strauss, Anselm L.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Strauss, Anselm L.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Social Psychology

The Contexts of Social Mobility: Ideology and Theory

Continual Permutations of Action: Communication and Social Order

Awareness of Dying

Social Psychology and Human Values: Documenting History, Charting Progress, and Exploring the World

Continual Permutations of Action

Status Passage

Qualitative Analysis for Social Scientists

Qualitative Analysis for Social Scientists

Mirrors and Masks