ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the extended-case method and its influential approach to method as theory in sociocultural anthropology. Developed by mid-century anthropologists associated with the Manchester School, the extended-case method serves to remind us of the recursive nature of anthropology's preoccupations. The extended-case method was integral to the conceptual ferment for which the Manchester School is renowned. Concepts such as networks, situations, social dramas and social fields came to augment the work of the extended-case method in introducing anthropology to new possibilities in what it could and should study. The lessons to be drawn from this ferment include sobering reflections on the apparently epoch-defining quality of multi-sited ethnography in more recent anthropology. Far more profound issues were at stake in the world in 1940 than the theory and method of sociocultural anthropology.
