How People Compare

This book focuses on comparison in anthropology, turning an ethnographic lens onto the diversity of comparative practice.

List of contents

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

About the author

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.

Summary

This book focuses on comparison in anthropology, turning an ethnographic lens onto the diversity of comparative practice.

Product details

• Authors: Mathijs Walker Pelkmans
• Assisted by: Mathijs Pelkmans (Editor), Pelkmans Mathijs (Editor), Harry Walker (Editor)
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd.
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 26.12.2022
• EAN: 9781032229973
• ISBN: 978-1-0-3222997-3
• No. of pages: 202
• Series: LSE Monographs on Social Anthropology
• Subjects: Natural sciences, medicine, IT, technology > Geosciences > Geography; Social sciences, law, business > Social sciences (general); Social Theory, Society & culture: general, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / General, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / Cultural & Social, Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography, Social and cultural anthropology, Society and culture: general, Human Geography