Syftet med artikeln är att redogöra för hur Nels Andersons (1889–1986) kärva hobouppväxt hängde samman skapandet av hans klassiska studie Hobon: En sociologisk studie av den hemlöse mannen (2008 [1923]) och hans marginaliserade position inom den akademiska världen. Fokus ligger på Andersons uppväxt, studien Hobon och hans marginella position i samhället i relation till pionjärtiden i Chicagoskolan. Baserat på texter om och av Anderson och till viss del arkivdokument, binder artikeln samman olika delar från Andersons liv med Robert E. Parks och Everett V. Stonequists begrepp the marginal man. Andersons sociala arv som en kringresande arbetare gjorde å ena sidan att doktorandkollegor vid University of Chicago antog att han var lika opålitlig som de hemlösa männen han hade studerat, å andra sidan gjorde det honom särskilt lämpad att göra den studie som kanske mer än någon annan har blivit ansedd som en etnografisk klassiker i Chicagoskolans tradition.

The purpose of this article is to outline how Nels Anderson’s (1889–1986) social heritage as a hobo was related to the creation of his sociological classic The Hobo: The Sociology of the Homeless Man (1923) and his marginalized position within the academic environment. The focus here is on Anderson’s social heritage, The Hobo, and his marginal position in society in relation to the pioneering era of the The Chicago School of Sociology. Based on the texts on and of Anderson and to some extent archival sources, the article knit together different parts of Anderson’s life with Robert E. Park’s and Everett V. Stonequist’s concept the marginal man. Anderson’s social heritage as a traveling workman made on the one hand his doctoral colleagues at University of Chicago assume that he was as unreliable as the homeless men he had studied, and on the other hand made him particularly well equipped to make the study that perhaps more than any other has become seen as a classic in the tradition of the Chicago School of Sociology.