The extended case: Interactional foundations and prospective dimensions

Don Handelman

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

8 Scopus citations

Abstract

The extended case is inherently processual, continuously becoming prospective history. Therefore, the dynamics of the extended case are necessarily temporal; there is no separation between the practice of social life and micro history. Here I ground the emerging temporality of the extended case in interpersonal interaction, in the dynamics of the creation and emergence of micro forms that Erving Goffman called encounters. An extended case emerges from a series of encounters as it moves into its own futures. Therefore, the extended case opens time/space to the practice of process, to the foregrounding of practice as intrinsically dynamic. The prospective perspective of the extended case pays close attention to how social life is practiced into existence as emergent phenomena, without assuming or presuming how social order holds together and falls apart. The extended case argues for a dynamic rather than a structural anthropology.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)61-84
Number of pages24
JournalSocial Analysis
Volume49
Issue number3
DOIs
StatePublished - 2005

Keywords

  • Dynamics
  • Emergence
  • Encounter
  • Extended case
  • Micro history
  • Morpho-genesis

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