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.

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. Extending the limits of interactionist theory, Strauss has raised questions about interpreting social phenomena that will be debated for some time to come.

Today we face the painful reality of the prevalence of chronic, rather than acute, diseases. The technologies developed to manager long-term, incurable illnesses have radically and irrevocably altered the organizational structure of health care, presenting us with a frequently bewildering array of medical specialties. Social Organization of Medical Work offers essential insight into this new era of health care. Through richly documented, often gripping case studies, Anselm Strauss and his co-authors show us exactly how health workers are confronting the problems created by chronic disease and coping with today's highly technologized hospitals. They guide us through the various hospital work sites, describing in detail the kinds of tasks performed by medical personnel, the interactions of staff members with each other and with patients, and the overall resulting patient treatment and response. Focusing on the concept of illness trajectory, the authors vividly illustrate the complex, contingent nature of modern medical work. For example, open heart surgery keeps ill persons alive and may even improve them symptomatically, but those who do survive must face an uncertain future in terms of the physiological consequences of the surgery and the drugs required. They also have to adjust t altered lifestyles. In the new introduction, Anselm Strauss discusses the continuing importance of this work to sociologists, medical scholars, and medical professionals.

DIVWritten shortly after the shattering effects of World War I, this volume initiated the author's experimental concept of pragmatic humanism. This revised, enlarged edition features Dewey's informative introduction. /div

Few phenomena have found such divergent descriptions in sociological lit­ erature as have social inconsistencies. They were studied by George Herbert Mead as eruptive "natural" events constituting a social temporality. Alfred SchUtz described them as "explosions" of the individual actor's anticipatory action patterns. Talcott Parsons attempted to grasp social inconsistencies into his frame of "pattern variables," while Erving Goffman dealt with them as disruptions of "fostered impressions of reality" maintained by one or the other dominant team. The present study traces these divergent approaches back to various un­ checked assumptions concerning the structure and the constitution of social types. Thus, to further clarify the relationship between social types and the relevance structure of interactional situations has been my first objective. This initially rather limited intention widened when the role of social incon­ sistencies for analysing the differences between play, game, and social action proper in the immediate context of social interaction became apparent. The structure of social inconsistencies seems to hold a key to unifying the theo­ ries of play and social ,action.

Arrowsmith has been inspirational for several generations of med students. Martin Arrowsmith agonizes over his career and life decisions never sure if he’s making the correct descisions. While the book details Arrowsmith's pursuit of the noble ideals of medical research for the benefit of mankind and of selfless devotion to the care of patients, Lewis throws many less noble temptations and self deceptions in Arrowsmith’s path. The attractions of financial security, recognition, even wealth and power distract Arrowsmith from his original plan to follow in the footsteps of his first mentor, Max Gottlieb, a brilliant but abrasive bacteriologist. A powerful novel that asks more questions than it answers. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize.