Comparison in Anthropology
The Impossible Method

Presents a systematic rethinking of the power and limits of comparison in anthropology.

Matei Candea (Author)

9781108465045, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 15 November 2018

404 pages, 17 b/w illus.
22.8 x 15.2 x 2.1 cm, 0.59 kg

'Matei Candea's book, Comparison in Anthropology: The Impossible Method, is a fascinating example of how complex, and how intellectually fortifying, the survival-revival genre can be. … As a historical primer on how anthropologists compare, and when they decide not to, the book has no rivals. I say this knowing that the publication of books and essays on comparison is endless … Candea re-articulates everything the comparative method aspires to but cannot attain. … Comparison in Anthropology is an exemplary blend of preaching and practice. Read it. Teach it. Object to it. And enjoy its incomparable e?ects.' Andrew Shryock, History and Anthropology

Why and how do social and cultural anthropologists make comparisons? What problems do they encounter in doing so, and how might these be resolved? What, if anything, makes one comparison better than another? This book answers these questions by exploring the many ways in which, from the nineteenth century to the present day, comparative methods have been conceptualised and re-invented, praised and rejected, multiplied and unified. Anthropologists today use comparisons to describe and to explain, to generalise and to challenge generalisations, to critique and to create new concepts. In this multiplicity of often contradictory aims lie both the key challenge of anthropological comparison, and also its key strength. Matei Candea maps a path through that entangled conversation, providing a ground-up re-assessment of the key conceptual issues at the heart of any form of anthropological comparison, whilst creating a bold charter for reconsidering the value of comparison in anthropology and beyond.

Introduction
Part I. Impossibilities: 1. The impossible method
2. The garden of forking paths
3. Caesurism and heuristics
Part II. An Archetype: 4. Comparatio
5. Two ends of lateral comparison: identity and alterity
6. Another dimension of lateral comparison: identity and intensity
7. Two ends of frontal comparison: identity, alterity, reflexivity
8. The oscillations of frontal comparison: identity, intensity, reflexivity
9. Rigour
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography [JHMC]