ABSTRACT
The distinctiveness of the case study is best expressed by the in-depth qualitative research that ethnographers and cultural anthropologists prefer, although it is also present, sometimes unwittingly, in the work of case study analysts from other disciplines, including history. The purpose of the research is to examine in detail a particular social phenomenon in a complex collectivity, the "case" at hand, whose boundaries make it a relatively self-enclosed system of social interaction. The protocol presented in this chapter is intended as a basis to generate comparative research designs that will minimize the possibility of such errors. The supposed explanations organize the analysis to such an extent that it is hard to escape from them, and the research becomes unwittingly tautological or self-fulfilling because it is then difficult to examine the validity of alternative perspectives or even for new ones to emerge from reviewing the evidence.
