In this dissertation I used the principles of the extended case method (Burawoy 1991, 1998) to help guide my data collection and analysis. The extended case method decrees that an investigator enter the field with knowledge of existing theories and seek to replicate those theories through daily interaction. The extended case method is particularly good at uncovering and making sense of anomalous cases which are not explained by existing theory (Babbie 2001; Burawoy 1991, 1998). There is a need within the field of institutionalism for a method which explains anomalous situations as so much scholarship in the past 25 years has been conducted in the long shadow cast by DiMaggio and Powell’s (1991) call for explaining why “there is such startling homogeneity of organizational forms and practices” (DiMaggio and Powell 1991:64). Such a perspective misses, however, those organizational forms and practices which explicitly resist
homogenization. The extended case method is well suited to remedying this oversight.
Background of Method
The extended case method stands in stark opposition to more positivist research methods. In qualitative methodology this means that the principles which underlie the extended case method are disconsonant with what Burawoy (1998) calls a “reflexive”
social science. Positive methodologies, qualitative or quantitative, seek to control for context. Burawoy draws on Katz (1983) to argue that these methods are aimed at
producing an objective research procedure or process by regulating the reactivity, reliability, replicability, and representativeness. Reactivity refers to the effect of the researcher on the research setting and should be minimized. Reliability is achieved through the use of a “consistent set of criteria for the selection of data” (Burawoy 1998:12). This should be done in a clear and coherent way, and one should be able to guarantee that the sample is indicative of the population so results will be both replicable and representative. Positive methodologies flourish, and to some extent create, research settings which are, or at least appear to be, homogenous. Just as the quintessential positive research method, surveys, restrict the range of possible answers and questions, the dominant qualitative method in this vein, grounded theory, compels researchers to continually look for similarities in the data. Burawoy writes that “it works best in a reified world that homogenizes all experience…Positive science realizes itself when we are powerless to resist wider systems” (Burawoy 1998:30). More accurately, and perhaps less bombastically, positive methods have a way of rendering potentially non-
homogenous or resistant activities as irrelevant with the designation of outlier status.
This is not to say that positive methods cannot be used to study resistance, but rather to argue that positive principles are inherently less concerned with those cases which do not fit the norm for the research question being posed. Even those primarily qualitative methods, which compel researchers to utilize the anomalous case, do so primarily as a way of understanding dominant behavior patterns. Thus, resistance can be studied effectively because it can be classified and typologized. Variation, however, presents an entirely different problem.
The extended case method is built, then, to deal especially with variation.
Researchers using reflexive methods do this by exploring and exploiting contextually specific elements. The method “takes context and situation as its points of departure” in order to discover the variation present in the local worlds of participants (Burawoy 1998:30). Burawoy posits three simultaneous “dialogues” that must take place in order for reflexive sociology to generate useful empirical information: between observer and participants, between local processes and extralocal forces, and between theory and itself (Burawoy 1998:5). These dialogues may be virtual, that is, constructed, or real and take place throughout the research process. They form the basis of the central tenets of
reflexive social science and the extended case method: intervention, process, structuration and reconstruction.
Intervention refers simply to making a virtue out of the intervention of the researcher into the participant’s life instead of trying to minimize an unavoidable impact of taking the participant out of his/her normal context. When an intervention occurs (e.g., in an interview or participant observation) an effort should be made to understand how the respondent understands the processes being interrogated during the intervention, to
“prioritize the social situation over the individual” (Burawoy 1998:16). Burawoy takes pains to point out that reflexive science is not aimed at simply comprehending a situation or displaying the range of narrative present in a local context. Reflexive researchers are just as concerned with uncovering social processes and categories. This involves a reduction of these narratives by gathering multiple interpretations of the same case and transforming “situational knowledge into social processes” (Burawoy 1998:15 emphasis in original). Stucturation refers simply to making an effort to understand and account for, rather than control, how the local environment shapes and is shaped by extralocal forces.
Reconstruction is dealt with more fully in the next section, and involves seeking out information which will confirm existing theory and thereby make the findings generalizable. Individual cases provide an interpretive challenge for existing theory which is refined and extended when it is unable to adequately explain the observed situation (Besecke 2001). This is no small task as the best reconstruction efforts are those which “leave core postulates intact, that do as well as the preexisting theory upon which they are built, and that absorb anomalies with parsimony, offering novel angles of vision”
(Burawoy 1998:16). There is a recognition that meeting all of these criteria for reconstruction is rarely possible but that this goal should be at the heart of reflexive science as exemplified by the extended case method.
Throughout the collection, analysis and presentation of the data in this
dissertation, I have endeavored to be as true to the principles of reflexive science and the extended case method as possible. In the course of gathering my data I was upfront and explicit about the nature of the research project. I designed the interview and observation guide to be just that, a guide. Thus, I make no claims to have understood the research setting apart from my own existence in it. The information gathered is highly contextual as I walked, both figuratively and literally, through daily routines and religious rituals with my respondents seeking their explanations on any artifact, structure or process that either appeared useful or important, and many that ultimately, were not. This contextual specificity is important for establishing the variation and intentionality necessary for constructing a theory of organizational resistance. It would be beyond the realm of realistic possibility to expect my respondents to be aware of the academic theories discussed in this dissertation, but that should not suggest that they are not savvy enough
to understand how to resist something as complex as institutionalization. Guided by the principles above, I set out to reconstruct and confirm theories of isomorphism and institutionalization. My inquiries were thus focused on the mundane, everyday events that are not often the subject of much concentrated thought. In order to sustain existing theory, my inquiries into organizational structures, processes and ideologies should have resulted in a struggle to explain why the organization operated in particular ways, reflecting a high degree of internalization and institutionalization. Instead, I received a variety of narratives or “situational knowledges” that were mobilized quickly and fully.
These narratives are presented in the chapters below as a set of processes or strategies which maintains and reflects the variation I found in the field, while extracting the
processes. Indeed the processes themselves are built on variation. Finally, I have made a concentrated effort to integrate the narratives of my respondents with those in the popular and academic literature regarding the relevant religious and social forces at work in the history of the Emerging Church in order to comprehend how my respondents’ efforts to create a satisfactory religious experience both shape and are shaped by the current religious landscape. These insights are explored in detail in chapter 2.
Generalizability
The extended case method helps bridge the gap in generalizability which plagued the single case studies of so much old institutionalism. Burawoy writes that
the extended case method applies reflexive science to ethnography in order to extract the general from the unique, to move from the ‘micro’ to the ‘macro,’ and to connect the present to the past in anticipation of the future, all by building on preexisting theory.
(Burawoy 1998:5)
The process of building to the macro from the micro occurs by searching
for theories that highlight some aspect of the situation under study as being anomalous and then proceeding to rebuild (rather than reject) that theory by reference to the wider forces at work, be they the state, the economy, or even the world system. (Burawoy 1991:6)
The study’s generalizability lies in its refinement of theories that are already “out there.”
The extended case method dictates that researchers enter the field with extensive knowledge of existing theories which should be, but are not, able to explain the case at hand. In this instance, existing institutional theory, old and new, fails to explain those organizational forms which explicitly reject isomorphic forces while still seeking growth and legitimacy. I gathered data about one of these organizations, the Emerging Church, in a way which will help to rebuild the existing institutional theory so that it can
incorporate these anomalous organizational forms.
One of the major tenets of the extended case method that is particularly useful for this study is that it makes a virtue out of traditionally problematic elements of qualitative research. For example, disruptions to the research environment by the researcher are viewed as opportunities to examine conventions which often only reveal themselves when under stress (Burawoy 1998). This is particularly applicable to my study as I am continually observing and asking questions about assumptions that are, in many
organizational settings, so ingrained as to be taken for granted, working on a
subconscious level. My interview questions are thus inherently disruptive as they request respondents to examine and provide rationale for those elements which they may not have considered.
As I note above the key is not that the macro is seen in or explains the micro or
that the micro is an expression of macro forces, but rather that every micro interaction is structured by macro forces. In my case, it is not that I turn to the Emerging Church and find evidence of consumerism or ecumenicalism, or secularization. Instead, I turn to the Emerging Church and its particular history in order to refine a particular theory, in this case neo-institutionalism, that should but does not account for the reality of the situation.
This theory gets refined not simply through the explanation of the anomalous case, but through the explanation of that anomalous case as occurring in a particular way because of the macro-level forces which shape it. In the U.S. the Emerging Church is seen as a direct response to the failure of the megachurch movement which initially promised to make church more relevant and local, but instead resulted in the (re)creation of highly centralized, rigidly structured religious organizations which simply replaced the
denominations with a more localized version of the same structure. This dissertation will uncover the processes which guide this movement by examining how the micro-level activities are guided and shaped by macro-level forces. Illuminating these processes and their connection with broad, societal forces will allow me to not only refine
organizational theory but also to draw some conclusions about the very nature of
resistance. In this way the information generated in this study will “extend” out beyond the field of religion or even organizational studies. However, this information cannot be generated without some modifications to the extended case method.
Modifications
The extended case method as it has been traditionally employed is not a perfect fit for this study, and I have thus had to make two minor modifications. First, most scholars
utilizing the extended case seek to integrate him/herself into a social situation as both participant and observer. Interviews are conducted but do not typically make up the bulk of the data generated. This project, which is concerned not with uncovering patterns but rather illuminating a general, conscious, resistance to patterns and routines, requires data from numerous sites and a heavy reliance on interviews in order to establish
intentionality. The principles of the extended case method do not exclude interview data, but heavy reliance on interview data is not typical of such studies. In the course of this research, then, I have been careful to analyze my interview data according to the principles discussed above.
Rather than seek to construct theory as many traditional ethnographic approaches suggest (e.g., grounded theory), I sought to verify existing theories of institutionalization and legitimation as they are present in the literature. Thus, I did not look to develop conceptual categories applicable across different contexts and organizational settings, but instead used each interview or set of field notes to inform my next experience in the field.
Each interaction was an opportunity to make the failings of existing theory more clear and the surrounding analysis more precise. Burawoy writes that “in pursuing theory reconstruction…the conjectures of yesterday’s analysis are refuted by today’s
observations and then reconstructed in tomorrow’s analysis” (Burawoy 1991:10-11). It is only when expectations based on existing theory and gathered data begin to match up with experiences in the field that the researcher has reached a point of saturation where the failings of existing theory are most clear and distinct and thus optimally positioned for improvement.
The interviews, therefore, matched this prescription for dealing with field
experiences. While there was a common set of questions, they were continually evolving as I sought to uncover different dimensions of the same, unexplained phenomenon rather than focusing solely on establishing consistency of experience. Interrogating the related issues of institutionalization and legitimation in this way gradually produced an outline of organizational resistance while at the same time illuminating the relevant socio-historical forces crucial to the development of such an organization. It is precisely these kind of data which allow us to theorize organizational resistance in an era characterized by institutional dominance.
Second, the data for this dissertation were gathered in multiple settings. Again, this does not explicitly violate any principle of the extended case method but rather the conventional employment. The nature of the Emerging Church as explicitly
uninstitutionalized necessitates a multi-sited approach as there is no exemplary or flagship enterprise which could serve to stand in for the whole. One of the things that becomes very apparent through the course of this dissertation is that no one individual congregation contains within it all of the elements for successful, sustained, long-term resistance. There is no ideal-type. Rather, individual congregations are more adept at achieving legitimacy while resisting particular routines based on their own contexts.
Examining these responses in several settings not only confirms the power and reach of institutionalized religious organizations as suggested by organizational theorists, but also, more importantly, demonstrates how organizational resistance is structured at both the local and field level an area traditional institutional theorists have left unexamined.
Limitations
Above, I discussed how the extended case method deals with issues of
replicability and generalizability, the traditional limitations of qualitative research. In addition, Burawoy (1998) recognizes four key limitations of the extended case method that each have to do with power in the research process, focusing more on ethical issues rather than empirical concerns. The first two, domination and silencing, involve, among other things, the inevitable privileging of some voices and diminution of others as researchers attempt to weave together multiple narratives. Also, research which is
concerned with uncovering how local environments are shaped by extralocal forces, has a tendency to make social objects and process appear more visible, permanent and natural than is the case in reality. In short, it objectifies those forces. Finally, and perhaps most importantly for this study, examining anomalies or differences “simultaneously threatens to normalize the empirical world we study, naturalizing what is, homogenizing
difference, domesticating resistance” (Burawoy 1998b:16). This is of particular concern for this research, but it is a danger which is mitigated, I believe, through the discovery of strategies and description of activities which truly contribute to the project of
organizational resistance. Whereas the act of making visible some subversive activities serves to incapacitate the project of resistance by commodifying the activities, true organizational resistance, as theorized in chapter 1, should inherently withstand attempts at incorporation. Increased visibility should not result in institutionalization of activities that are, by their nature, constantly changing.