The Manchester School

Pioneered by Max Gluckman to demonstrate the way in which social practice and structure together constitute and are themselves constituted by the situational flow of social life, the extended case method became diagnostic of the Manchester School of Social Anthropology. Anticipating practice theory, and implicitly politically charged, it was developed as a tool to bring into account what orthodox structural functionalism was ill-equipped to address, namely, problems such as change, conflict, deviance, and individual choice.

Edited by two students of Gluckman, the volume comprises reprinted pieces by Gluckman and his colleague Clyde Mitchell, a Coda by Mitchell''s student, Bruce Kapferer, contributions by Gluckman''s students and/or friends and colleagues, including Ronnie Frankenberg, Kapferer, Evens, Handelman, and Sally Falk Moore, as well as a number of contributions from other practitioners of the extended case. Apart from the reprinted pieces by Gluckman and Mitchell, all the contributions have been written for this volume. These essays, historical, theoretical, and ethnographical, serve to highlight and critically examine the fundamental features of the extended-case method, in order to advance its substantial, continuing merits.

Pioneered by Max Gluckman to demonstrate the way in which social practice and structure together constitute and are themselves constituted by the situational flow of social life, the extended case method became diagnostic of the Manchester School of Social Anthropology. Anticipating practice theory, and implicitly politically charged, it was developed as a tool to bring into account what orthodox structural functionalism was ill-equipped to address, namely, problems such as change, conflict, deviance, and individual choice.

Edited by two students of Gluckman, the volume comprises reprinted pieces by Gluckman and his colleague Clyde Mitchell, a Coda by Mitchell’s student, Bruce Kapferer, contributions by Gluckman’s students and/or friends and colleagues, including Ronnie Frankenberg, Kapferer, Evens, Handelman, and Sally Falk Moore, as well as a number of contributions from other practitioners of the extended case. Apart from the reprinted pieces by Gluckman and Mitchell, all the contributions have been written for this volume. These essays, historical, theoretical, and ethnographical, serve to highlight and critically examine the fundamental features of the extended-case method, in order to advance its substantial, continuing merits.

Introduction: The Ethnographic Praxis of the Theory of Practice
T. M. S. Evens and Don Handelman

SECTION I: THEORIZING EXTENDED CASES

Preface: Theorizing the Extended-Case Study Method
T. M. S. Evens and Don Handelman

Chapter 1. Ethnographic Data in British Social Anthropology
Max Gluckman

Chapter 2. Case and Situation Analysis
J. Clyde Mitchell

Chapter 3. An Ontology for the Ethnographic Analysis of Social Processes: Extending the Extended-Case Method
Andreas Glaeser

Chapter 4. Some Ontological Implications of Situational Analysis
T. M. S. Evens

Chapter 5. The Extended Case: Interactional Foundations and Prospective Dimensions
Don Handelman

Chapter 6. Situations, Crisis, and the Anthropology of the Concrete: The Contribution of Max Gluckman
Bruce Kapferer

SECTION II: HISTORICIZING EXTENDED CASES

Preface: Historicizing the Extended-Case Method
T. M. S. Evens and Don Handelman

Chapter 7. Made in Manchester? Methods and Myths in Disciplinary History
David Mills

Chapter 8. History of the Manchester ‘School’ and the Extended-Case Method
Marian Kempny

Chapter 9. A Bridge over Troubled Waters, or What a Difference a Day Makes: From the Drama of Production to the Production of Drama
Ronald Frankenberg

SECTION III: CASE STUDIES

Preface: Extended-Case Studies—Place, Time, Reflection
T. M. S. Evens and Don Handelman

Chapter 10. The Workings of Uncertainty: Interrogating Cases on Refugees in Sweden
Karin Norman

Chapter 11. The Vindication of Chaka Zulu: Retreat into the Enchantment of the Past C.
Bawa Yamba

Chapter 12. The Politics of Ethnicity as an Extended Case: Thoughts on a Chiefly Succession Crisis
Björn Lindgren

Chapter 13. From Tribes and Traditions to Composites and Conjunctures
Sally Falk Moore

Epilogue
Bruce Kapferer

Index