How People Compare

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

Autorentext

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.

Inhalt

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