Symbolic Interaction and the Grounded Theory Method

Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss, together with Jeanne Quint, collaborated on a research project in the 1960s that resulted in the highly innovative and now widely used Grounded Theory Method [GTM]. The pioneering characteristics of the method drew on the different backgrounds of Glaser and Strauss; respectively, the work of Lazarsfeld and Merton based at University of Columbia, New York, and Chicago School sociology. This latter influence encompassed Symbolic Interactionism and Pragmatism, although Glaser later sought to downplay or even deny the importance of this. In what follows we outline the trajectory leading through Strauss from the Chicago School to GTM, and the ways in which later developments in the method – e.g., Constructivist GTM and Situated Analysis – build specifically on these antecedents to the method itself.