The Bridge and the Dance: Situational Analysis in Anthropology

This chapter explores the birth and development of situational anal- ysis: a qualitative research method first introduced into anthropology by Max Gluckman (1940a, b‚ 1942) and subsequently developed by his students at the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute and in Manchester. Based on the detailed descriptions of particular social situations (either conflicts, rituals, or other public or private events), this method aims to account for the different strategies and positioning of the actors involved, shedding light on the broader socio-political scenarios that affect local contexts and more generally illustrating processes of change or continuity in particular social dynamics. It is a method that focuses on the precise presentation of the materials that anthropologists collected in the field, but which uses them not as illustrative examples of given structural principles, but rather as points of entry for understanding the dynamism and variability of the contexts under investigation (Handelman 2006; Kempny 2005; Schumaker 2001, 2004)