Extended Case Method

I employed extended case method to explore the interactions of the various legal systems in the diachronic and synchronic approaches among the local community. The rationale for choosing the extended case is mainly due to its essentiality to explore the lived experiences of actors and to help build theory from below. It is also a research method that focuses on a detailed study of concrete empirical cases with a view to „extract” general principles from specific observations.

Through extended case method, a researcher would participate in and observe a number of related events and actions of individuals and groups over an extended period of time. The researcher would then construct his or her (ethnographic) story and theorize about a social phenomenon, rather than starting with a theory to explain an empirical reality.

27

Scholars (e.g., Bryant, A. and K. Charmaz 2007) recommend that analyzing first a social reality to grasp the different dimensions of the lives of local communities from the empirical data and go later to theories to create a nexus or modify the existing theories is also a strategy relevant to understand better the social world. Bryant, A. and K. Charmaz presented their alternative ways of grasping the social world in what they call „Grounded Theory in Ethnography” (2007). They criticize researchers who go to the fieldwork packed with theories. Bryant, A. and K. Charmaz also underline that using theory to start field work impedes “understanding the experiences or the social world as the studied live it” (Bryant, A. and K. Charmaz 2007: 161).

The extended case method also emphasizes on extensions of the local realities to forces outside a given area. The method also applies reflexive science to ethnography „to extract the general from the unique, to move from the micro to macro, to connect the present to the past in anticipation of the future all by building on the pre-existing theory“ (Burawoy 1998: 5, 2009: 21).

Taking from his experiences in postcolonial Zambia as a factory worker and researcher, Burawoy's new version of the extended case method unbounded ethnographic method that limited its domain of investigation to a specified cultural group or socio-cultural setting (Burawoy 2009: 20). Ethnography focuses on the description of unrelated and bulky data rather than analyzing and extending data for theory building (Bryant, A. and K. Charmaz 2007: 160). In this regard, historical episodes and events that have links to a given socio-cultural phenomena may not be given due attention.

Moreover, based on the tenets of ethnography, a researcher may not go beyond a specific socio-cultural setting despite the fact that there are events that have close links with his/her area of investigation. The extended case method also disagrees with positivism ways of looking at the social world that gives little place for a researcher to get into the lives of the community „not to disturb the world the ethnographer studies” (2009: xii-xiii). Rather positivism insists that social phenomena can be explained by observing cause and effect. This is something which has been borrowed directly from the natural sciences (Henn M. e t al. 2006: 12). Other scholars also stress that a researcher should go to the field, interact with the studied group and generate empirical data to develop a theory. This group of scholars (e.g. Burawoy 1998; Bryant, A. and K. Charmaz 2007) criticized both the ethnographic and positivist ways of exploring socio-cultural settings that focus on studying the world as it is and grasping reality without the context a researcher

28

studies (Burawoy; 1998, 2009: xii; Charmaz. and Mitchell., 2007). For them, the researcher is inherently part of the world he/she studies. Moreover, the researcher should extend his domain of exploration over time and space. Thus, these explanations have introduced the revolutionary idea in the methods of social sciences by breaking the barriers hitherto bounded ethnographers not to look beyond a given socio-cultural boundary both spatially and temporally. Extended case method, however, introduces the ideas of extending local realities to forces outside their borders and creating links between micro and macro forces. Burawoy also introduced four tenets of extended case method that can create ties between the past and the present, the micro and the macro, the researcher and researched, as well as between the pre-existing and new theories.

These principal guiding principles comprise such four extensions as the extensions of the observer into the lives of participants under study, the extension of observations over time and space, the extension from micro processes to macro processes, and the extension of theory (Burawoy, 2009 xviii). Bryant, A. and K. Charmaz (2007) also recommend the interaction between the researcher and the researched, going to the field, and gathering empirical data that will move the research and the researcher towards theory development. These scholars recommend a bottom-up approach for a qualitative study to explore socio-cultural setting such as legal pluralism among the contemporary societies.

Thus, against the backdrop of the above brief explanations, I believe that the extended case method has so many advantages to exploring such notions as legal pluralism that involves various forces or legal systems that operate even beyond a specific socio-cultural setting including the global norms. First, it provides me with an opportunity to extend spatially and temporally over time and space to explore legal pluralism in an ethnic federal state of Ethiopia and to reconstruct the genesis of legal pluralism, its aspects, and intra as well as inter-ethnic relations that the components of the notions have in the area. It also helps me explore the micro-macro links and the theoretical debates that are unfolding in the field of legal anthropology and other socio-legal studies.

I employed three of the perspectives that Burawoy put forward, namely the extension of observations over time and space, the extension from micro processes to macro forces, and the extension of theories.

29

First, the method helped me investigate the historical developments of legal pluralism, its changes and continuities over time among the Siltie based on my key informants' interviews. It also facilitated my data collection on inter-ethnic structures and functions of the various legal systems. The method was also helpful to understand the intra and interactions among the local community and with the neighboring ethnic groups. Second, the method helped me to construct a link between micro and macro processes. In this regard, I employed the method to extend the local legal realities beyond the study area. The local cannot be understood without the surrounding events like the national or the global forces taking the impacts of globalization into consideration. In this vein, the emergence of modern Ethiopian state in general and the genesis of legal pluralism, in particular, have gone through various stages. Historical sources (Lapiso 1984, 1999, 2000; Bahru, 1991) explain that the creation of modern Ethiopian state had been conceived since the nineteenth century. Unlike most of the African countries that were colonized by Western powers, the introduction of legal pluralism into Ethiopia has a different story. This period marks not only the coming into being of modern Ethiopian state but also the transplantation of new state legal system and hence constellation of legal pluralism in the country. The Siltie were incorporated into the new Ethiopian state in the late nineteenth century (Bustorf 2011; Kairedin 2012). Thus, the method had been employed to explore the status of the customary justice system before the end of the nineteenth century, the process of legal implantation and the interactions among legal systems. The method had also become crucial to look at the competitions and complementary natures of the various legal systems and the power relations among legal actors in diachronic approach (Moore, 2000). The extended case method was also important to investigate how the contemporary ethnic federal system enriches legal systems in the country, solves the age-old tensions between the centripetal and the centrifugal forces in the country taking the Siltie experiences as a case. Third, the method had also effectively helped me to link national developments to the Siltie`s local experiences. Therefore, the method had become a necessary methodological perspective to connect the post-1991 Ethiopia's ethnic federal experience to the global changes that has unfolded following the end of cold war in the 1990s. The post-cold war global changes have given rise to a new world order dominated by the capitalist block that unequivocally makes democracy and respect for diversity its priority.

30

The changes have also brought one or another form of international corporations that do not respect national boundaries and hence contribute to the coming into being of failed states (Santos de Sousa, 2006; Bellagamba/Klute, 2008; Berman, 2012). Therefore, the extended case method had helped me extend the local reality into the global ethnography that is also instrumental to understand common patterns around the world and the forces that create them (Burawoy, 2009).Taking the existences of global legal scales that sometimes compete, and at times complement the customary, religious and state judicial systems into consideration and the existence of porosity among each other, one can say that the local reality can contribute to theoretical debates on legal pluralism.