Situational Analysis: Grounded Theory After the Interpretive Turn

About Adele E. ClarkeCarrie FrieseRachel Washburn

Adele E. Clarke was Professor of Sociology and History of Health Sciences at the University of California San Francisco. She studied with Anselm Strauss and used and taught grounded theory developing situational analysis as an extension. Her book Situational Analysis: Grounded Theory After the Postmodern Turn (SAGE 2005) won the Cooley Distinguished Book Award Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction. The 2nd edition with Carrie Friese and Rachel Washburn appeared in 2018. Clarkes research centered on science technology and medicine studies especially biomedicalization and technologies for women. Her book Disciplining Reproduction: Modernity American Life Sciences and the Problem of Sex won the Basker Award Society for Medical Anthropology and Fleck Award Society for Social Studies of Science. Clarke received the 2013 Bernal Prize for Outstanding Contributions from the Society for Social Studies of Science and the 2015 Reeder Award for Distinguished Contributions to Medical Sociology. Carrie Friese (PhD) is associate professor of sociology at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her initial research focused on assisted reproductive technologies for humans and endangered species including the development of interspecies nuclear transfer (aka cloning) for species preservation in zoos. Her book Cloning Wild Life: Zoos Captivity and the Future of Endangered Animals (NYU Press) appeared in 2013. Frieses new research project explores animal husbandry and care in scientific knowledge production including comparisons of care practices and their regulation in the United Kingdom. She has used situational analysis across these research projects and has given talks and taught courses on the method across Europe. Rachel Washburn (PhD) is associate professor of Sociology at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. She used situational analysis in her doctoral research on the politics of human biomonitoring and has continued to do so in subsequent research on the same topic. Her dissertation Measuring the Chemicals Within: The Social Terrain of Human Biomonitoring in the United States was awarded the Anselm Strauss Outstanding Qualitative Dissertation Award in 2009. She has given talks and workshops on situational analysis at universities in the United States and Canada. Her current research examines the politics of mid-20th-century science related to the human health effects of pesticides.