The Manchester School

<p> 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.</p><p> 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.</p>