T. M. S. Evens and Don Handelman (eds.) 2006.

The Manchester School: Practice

and Ethnographic Praxis in Anthropology. Oxford/New York: Berghahn. x + 334 pp.

Draft review by John Postill for journal Ethnos, submitted April 2007

This volume revisits the extended-case method, an ethnographic research strategy

developed in the 1940s to 1960s by members of the so-called Manchester School of
anthropology led by Max Gluckman. The book opens with an introductory section,
followed by sections on the theorisation, history and practice of the extended-case
method, and concluding with a coda by Bruce Kapferer. The introduction features
reprints of classic texts by Gluckman (1961) and Mitchell (1983); the following
section engages critically with the method’s enduring strengths and weaknesses,
exploring new theoretical possibilities by way of Heidegger, Goffman, Deleuze and
Guattari; the historical section traces the method’s mixed ancestry, including its
hitherto little known Chicago connections; finally, the practical section assesses the
method’s relevance to contemporary anthropological analysis.

The book accomplishes admirably its stated aim, namely ‘to highlight and critically
examine the fundamental features of the extended-case method, in order to advance
its substantial, continuing merits’ (back cover). Its editors and chapter contributors
demonstrate that the extended-case method is more than a ‘method’, it is a
sophisticated mode of research and analysis arising from the long-standing political,
institutional and epistemological concerns of Gluckman and his students. It is
characterised by a painstaking ethnographic attention to socio-political processes as
they unfold across varied contexts over time, with a focus on situations of conflict, or
‘trouble cases’ as Gluckman called them. Generalisation emerges from the data, not
from a prior theoretical agenda. While Gluckman’s ‘The Bridge’ (1958 [1940]) was
the inspiration, the method’s masterpieces are Mitchell’s (1956) monograph The Yao
Village, in which he followed witchcraft accusations in a single village over a period
of six years, and Turner’s (1957) Ndembu study where he first developed the concept
of social drama. The innovation lay in bringing under a unified analysis a long series
of events that were separated in time and micro-setting. This stood in stark contrast to
the existing (and still common today) monographic practice of ‘apt illustration’, i.e.
using unrelated ethnographic materials to support an overarching argument.
Countering criticisms from Leach and others that the Manchester approach entailed
the obsessive collection of masses of data for their own sake, the Mancunians
defended – and still defend – the method for its openness to the messy actualities of
social life and capacity to yield unexpected insights. As Kapferer argues in the book’s
coda, Gluckman and his associates were ahead of their time not only in theorising
social process; their very ethnographic practice was reflexively attuned to the
dialectical process of data description and analysis. Their use of situated analysis and
extended cases helped to weaken static notions of bounded collectivity such as
village, community or society and created a new anthropological lexicon aimed at
capturing the flux and uncertainty of political life with notions such as social drama,
social field, arena and action-set (see chapter by Kempny). The implications of this
shift are, of course, still being worked out today (see Amit and Rapport 2002).

This book is a timely addition to the ongoing rethinking of practice theory after
Bourdieu. As pointed out by the editors, American anthropology has long been
besotted with aspects of Bourdieu’s theory of practice but has ignored the Manchester
tradition. With its ethnographic grounding, attention to situated process, and stress on
the latent potentialities of social interaction for the structuring of social life (cf.
Giddens 1984), the renewal of this social anthropological tradition signalled by the
present study has much to offer cultural anthropologists in the United States and
elsewhere. Undergraduate and MA anthropology students will benefit from the book’s
seamless integration of historiography, theory and methodology – three domains that
are usually kept separate. For PhD students it should be required pre-fieldwork
reading alongside one or two of the classic 1950s Manchester monographs where the
method and its theoretical import are best developed (e.g. Mitchell 1956, Turner 1957,
Epstein 1958). In addition, those interested in placing the book within its direct line
of descent should read the edited volumes that followed the 1950s monographs
(Swartz et al 1966, Epstein 1967, Mitchell 1969) as well as Turner’s (1974)
magisterial Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors.

John Postill
Sheffield Hallam University, UK

References

Amit, Vered and Nigel Rapport. 2002. The Trouble with Community:
Anthropological Reflections on Movement, Identity and Collectivity. London: Pluto.

Epstein, A.L. 1958. Politics in an Urban African Community. Manchester:

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Epstein, A.L. (ed). 1967. The Craft of Social Anthropology. London: Social Science
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Giddens, Anthony. 1984. The Constitution of Society. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Gluckman, Max. 1958 [1940]. The Analysis of a Social Situation in Modern Zululand,
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Rhodes-Livingstone Institute. Extract reprinted in Joan Vincent (ed) 2002 The
Anthropology of Politics, Oxford: Blackwell, 53-58.

Gluckman, Max. 1961. Ethnographic data in British Social Anthropology.

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Mitchell, J. Clyde. 1956. The Yao Village. Manchester: Manchester University Press
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Mitchell, J. Clyde (ed). 1969. Social Networks in Urban Situations. Manchester:

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Mitchell, J. Clyde. 1983. Case and situational analysis. Sociological Review 31: 187-
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Swartz, Marc J., Victor W. Turner and Arthur Tuden. 1966. Political Anthropology.
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Turner, Victor W. 1974. Dramas, Fields and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human
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