The Extended Case Method: Four Countries, Four Decades, Four Great Transformations, and One Theoretical Tradition

356 Pages·2009·27.16 MB·English

by  Michael Burawoy

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The Extended
Case Method

Four Countries, Four Decades,
Four Great Tra_nsformations)
and One Theoretical Tradition

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Michael Burawoy

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UNIVERSITY . OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

· Berkeley

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Los Angeles

London

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Chapters 2, 3, and 4 are slightly revised versions of articles that

first appeared in Sociological Theo1y I6, no. 1 (I998), The American

Sociological Review 68, no. 5 (2003), and Theory and Society r8 (I989).

University of California Press, one of the most distinguished uni­

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University of California Press

Berkeley and Los Angeles; California

University of California Press, Ltd.

London, England

© 2009 by The Regents 9f the University of California

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
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Burawoy, Michael.

four decades,
The. extended case method: four countries,
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four great transformations, and one theoretical tradition I

Michad Burawoy.

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Includes bibliographical references a�d index.

ISBN 978...:.0-520-25900-3 (cloth: alk. paper)

ISBN 978-o-520-25901...:.0 (pbk.: alk. paper)

1.

Comparative economics.·

4· Working class.

HB9o.B87

2. Capitalism. 3· Marxism.

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2009

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2008034393

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Manufactured in the United States of America

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processed chlorine free. It is acid free, Ecologo certified, and · man-

ufactured by BioGas energy.

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For the students with whom, from whom, and against

whom I learned the secrets ofparticipant observation

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CONTENTS

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�ist of Tables

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lX

Prologue: Bringing Theory to the Field

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XI

Introduction:

From Manchester to Berkeley

by Way of Chicago

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The Extended Case Method:

Race and Class in Postcolonial Africa

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2. The Ethnographic Revisit:

Capitalism in Transition and Other Histories

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3· Two Methods in Search of Revolution:

Trotsky versus Skocpol

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4 · Multicase Ethnography:

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Tracking the Demise of State Socialism

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Conclusion:

T he Ethnography of Great Transformations

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Epilogue: On Public Ethnography

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279

References

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TABLES

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The Gap between Principles and Practice

of Science

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Four Methods of Social Science

Roy's Original Ethnography

and Burawq_y's Revisit

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Typology and Examples of Classic

. (Focused) Revisits

5· Skocpol's Arguments
6. Four.Moments of the Multicase Method
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T�e Trajectory of Successive Cas� Studies
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Public and Academic Ethnography

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lX
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PROLOGUE

Bringing Theory to the Field

This book arose from the badgering of Lore W acquant, who

insisted that it was time to collect these essays, new and old, and
thro·w do w n the gauntlet to the Chicago Sc);)ool. While I'm grate.·
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ful for all his encouragement, forcing me to rethink once again

what I have been doing for forty years, I could not follow his pro­

I doubt
posal to inaugurate a Berkeley school of ethnography.
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there .could ever be a such a school, since Berkeley's distinction .

lies in the diversity of its approaches to everything, and to ethn,og:
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raphy in particular. Our ethnographies run the gafll:U� .fr.qw . . :·..
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. Marxism to feminism and postcolonialism, from positivi > · . .. �;· ,;.·; ,.:-:- ...,;:I,,,.
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reflexive sociology, from symbolic interaction to comparati }f '· ..
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tory. As ethnographers all we have in ·COmmon is a commi -. �.. ' ..· . . . .
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to studying others in their space and time. From the beginfl�:�g_· ··.. ;·:.·
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the ethos of Berkeley sociology has always been antischooL :. .,.-: �.·,- _:. ;. : � ·. .

To deny the existence of a Berkeley school is not to say that ffi..Y: ;·

. vision of ethnography appeared as an immaculate conception . or
was cultivated in heroic ethnographic isolation. To the contrary,

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