This book focuses on comparison in anthropology, turning an ethnographic lens onto the diversity of comparative practice. It seeks to understand how, why and with what consequences diversely situated groups of people – many of whom operate on radically different premises to professional anthropologists – make comparisons, above all, between themselves and real or imagined others. What motivates people to compare, what techniques or logics do they employ, and what are the most likely outcomes – both intended and unintended? How do comparative practices reflect, reinforce or refuse uneven relations of power? And finally, what can a rejuvenated comparative anthropology learn from the anthropology of comparison? The volume develops a dialogue between scholars with long- term ethnographic engagement in a variety of contexts around the world and is particularly valuable reading for those interested in anthropological methodology and theory.
1 On the Act of Comparison: An Introduction
Mathijs Pelkmans
Part I: The Art of Comparing
2 In Defence of Bad Comparisons? Comparisons and their Motivations in Indonesia’s Riau Islands
Nicholas J. Long
3 Recognizing Uniqueness: On (Not) Comparing the World Nomad Games
Mathijs Pelkmans
4 Totemic Comparisons; or, How Things Compose in Southeast Solomon Islands
Michael W. Scott
5 All Alike Anyway: An Amazonian Ethics of Incommensurability
Harry Walker
Part II: Comparison at Work
6 Principles or Pragmatics? Debt Advice as a Comparative Encounter
Deborah James
7 Long, Hard Labours of Comparison: The Japanese Salaryman Distinguishing himself in his Totalizing Corporation
Mitchell W Sedgwick
8 Uncomfortable Comparisons: Anthropology, Development and Mixed Feelings
Katy Gardner and Julia Qermezi Huang
9 Implicit Comparisons, or Why it is Inevitable to Study China in Comparative Perspective
Hans Steinmüller and Stephan Feuchtwang
10 Afterword: The Social Lives of Comparison
Harry Walker
Biography
Mathijs Pelkmans is a professor in the Department of Anthropology at the London School of Economics and Political Science, UK.
Harry Walker is an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at the London School of Economics and Political Science, UK.
