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=                           Nels_Anderson                            =
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                            Introduction
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Nels Anderson (July 31, 1889 - October 8, 1986) was an early American
sociologist who studied hobos, urban culture, and work culture.


                             Biography
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Anderson studied at the University of Chicago under Robert E. Park and
Ernest Burgess, whose Concentric zone model was one of the earliest
models developed to explain the organization of urban areas.
Anderson's first publication, 'The Hobo' (1923),  was a work that used
participant observation as a research method. It was the first field
research monograph of the Chicago School of Sociology.

Anderson received his doctorate from New York University and taught at
Columbia University from 1928 to 1934, when he became a civil servant.
He worked as a public servant both in Washington, D.C. and abroad,
mainly with agencies for work and welfare until 1953. He continued to
publish work on hobos and the homeless under the alias Dean Stiff. In
an autobiographical sequence of articles entitled "Sociology has Many
Faces", he wrote that no matter where he was working during these 30
years of being in non-academic sociology work, he always felt he was
using and applying his sociological knowledge.

During the war, he served in the Middle and Near East with merchant
marine personnel. Following the war, he worked as labor relations
expert in Germany. At age 65, he returned to research, invigorating
social research in Germany and eventually becoming head of the UNESCO
Institute for Social Science at Cologne, from 1953 to 1962. In 1965,
he joined the Department of Sociology at the University of New
Brunswick, where he served as a professor until 1977.

Throughout his career, Dr. Anderson's research focused on issues of
contemporary relevance such as healthy cities and marginalized people.

A conference celebrating the 85th anniversary of the publication of
'The Hobo' was held in May 2008.


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Original Article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nels_Anderson