ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces situational maps. In doing initial situational maps, the analyst should specify the nonhuman elements in the situation and how they are constructed in discourses, thus making pertinent materialities and discourses visible from the outset. The initial maps done in SA situational maps lay out the major human, nonhuman, discursive, historical, symbolic, cultural, political, and other elements in the research situation of concern and provoke analysis of relations among them. SA enrolls Foucault's post-structural approaches to help push grounded theory around the postmodern turn to take these into account. SA offers three kinds of maps as fresh analytic devices for grounded theorists. The importance of Strauss's social worlds and arenas theory, Foucault's emphasis on discourse and going beyond the knowing subject, the analytic centrality of the nonhuman, and the concept of situation are clear. Strauss pursued this through the methodological framework of the conditional matrix developed with Julie Corbin.
