Strauss, Anselm

Anselm L. Strauss (1916–1996) was an American symbolic interactionist and cofounder of the grounded theory method. Strauss advocated developing middle-range theories from systematic analysis of qualitative data. His noted works span his career from his major coauthored textbook with Alfred Lindesmith, Social Psychology, in 1949 to his culminating volume, Continuous Permutations of Actions in 1993. Among Strauss's principal contributions are his coauthored works, Awareness of Dying (1965) and The Discovery of Grounded Theory (1967) as well as numerous theoretical analyses of empirical research that reconceptualized ideas in their respective substantive fields. Strauss received his baccalaureate degree from the University of Virginia, where the writings of Robert Park awakened his sociological consciousness. He received his doctorate from the University of Chicago. While at Chicago, the works ...