Generic Social Processes: Reimagining a Conceptual Schema for Grounded Theory in the Contemporary Era

ABSTRACT

Grounded theory (GT) has gone through a number of changes since Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss’s seminal introduction to the tradition. Newer constructivist versions of GT allow for pre-formed theoretical and conceptual strategies to guide data collection, for the idea that knowledge should emerge only inductively from the field is no longer seen as tenable. Within this context, we present Robert Prus’s “generic social processes” framework as a set of conceptual tools especially useful in guiding constructivist GT. Yet this framework has been challenged in light of contemporary debates on the epistemological status of generalized sociological claims, the ontological nature of the social world, and the importance of explanatory knowledge. These debates lead us to consider new adaptions to this now-classic schema of generic social processes with an eye to the future of GT and a more conceptually rich ethnography.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ It is worth noting that Robert Prus recently won the “George Herbert Mead Lifetime Achievement Award” (2018) from the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction, which speaks to the importance of his GSP scheme as well as his other contributions to the interactionist community.

² See also Low (2008) for an analysis of the influence of Simmel on Blumer’s interactionism.

³ Consulting Prus (1987, 1990, 1996, 1997, 2010) will provide the reader a more adequate understanding of the full scope of the GSP framework.

⁴ See Reynolds (1993) for a good summary of both internal and external critiques of the interactionist tradition.

⁵ By requiring associations to be concrete and visible in instances of action, Latour’s (2005) definition also excludes mysterious and invisible, yet too often lazily invoked “social forces.”

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Antony Puddephatt

Antony Puddephatt is professor of sociology at Lakehead University, Canada. He has studied the social theory of George Herbert Mead, exploring the relevance of his social pragmatism for a wide range of contemporary theoretical issues. He has also conducted empirical studies of the social world of chess, the institutional culture of Canadian sociology, and more recently the experiences of editors who run open access journals. With William Shaffir and Steven Kleinknecht, he is co-editor of Ethnographies Revisited: Constructing Theory in the Field (Routledge, 2009) and with Bradley Brewster, he is co-editor of Microsociological Perspectives for Environmental Sociology (Routledge, 2017).

Arthur McLuhan

Arthur McLuhan (Department of Sociology, York University) studies the sociologies of morality and social problems, self and identity, and subcultures and everyday life. He places emphasis on developing formal theoretical accounts of social processes that are empirically grounded in the comparative, ethnographic examination of social worlds. Currently, he is focused on developing interactionist accounts of character and competence. His work has been published in Symbolic Interaction, The American Sociologist, Canadian Ethnic Studies, The Canadian Jo‎urnal of Sociology, Sage Open, and Studies in Symbolic Interaction.