Abstract
During Strauss's formative years as a sociologist, neither sex nor gender, nor for that matter race/ethnicity, was central to the broader American sociological agenda. Social class and mobility were, and Strauss wrote on these issues, both in terms of their social psychological dimensions vis-à-vis transformations of identity (1959) and their situatedness (1971b/2006). Immigration issues were also vivid for American sociology (especially for Chicago School sociologists) and for Strauss, a child of German Jews. He took up these concerns most directly in his urban sociology (Strauss, 1961, 1991, pp. 287–312), and in his work on large-scale symbolization (1971a, 1971b/2006, 1993, pp. 162–167).