How People Compare

1. Auflage 2024
ISBN: 978-1-032-25514-9
Verlag: Routledge

Buch, Englisch, 212 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 333 g

Reihe: LSE Monographs on Social Anthropology

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.

Zielgruppe

Academic

Autoren/Hrsg.

Pelkmans, Mathijs

Walker, Harry

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziologie Allgemein

Inhaltsverzeichnis

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

Über Autor(innen)

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.