Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2plfb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T11:07:42.419Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Comparative Method in Anthropological Perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

E. A. Hammel
E. A. Hammel
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Comparison is an indispensable technique of analytic scholarship. No analytic statement about empirical observation can be made without at least one comparison providing the contrast that permits either inductive generalization or deductive proof. Comparison is used for these purposes in all disciplines, but not always in the same way, or for the same reasons. Anthropology came to comparison because comparison was thrust on it by the rediscovery of classical antiquity and the opening of Africa, Asia, and the New World to a previously more isolated Europe. Indeed, anthropology was born as a response to the great cultural contrasts thus exposed. This philosophical child of comparison, however, pursued it in some very special ways. In the first place, the initial interests of anthropology lay in the reconstruction of an unknown human past, attempting to explain cultural variety through the reconstruction of events leading up to the present. In the second place, the comparisons drawn by anthropologists were usually extreme, prompted as they were by the shock value of new discoveries.

Type
Approaches to Historical Comparison
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 22 , Issue 2 , April 1980 , pp. 145 - 155
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1980

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Berlin, Brent, AND Kay, Paul 1969. Basic color terms. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Bock, Kenneth E. 1956. The acceptance of histories. University of California Publications in Sociology and Social Institutions, Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 1–132.Google Scholar
Driver, Harold E. 1973. Cross-cultural studies. In Handbook of social and cultural anthropology, ed. Honigmann, John J.. Chicago: Rand McNally.Google Scholar
Driver, Harold E., AND Chaney, Richard P. 1973. Cross-cultural sampling and Galton's problem. In A handbook of method in cross-cultural anthropology, eds. Naroll, Raoul and Cohen, Ronald. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Eggan, Fred 1954. Social anthropology and the method of controlled comparison. American Anthropologist 56: 743–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eggan, Fred 1950. The social organization of the western Pueblos. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Fischer, Jack 1958. The classification of residence in censuses. American Anthropologist 60: 508–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foster, George M. 1951. A cross-cultural anthropological analysis of a technical aid program. Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution.Google Scholar
Foster, George M. 1953. Use of anthropological methods and data in planning and operation. Public Health Reports 68(9): 841–57.Google Scholar
Gluckman, Max 1945. African land tenure. Rhodes-Livingstone Journal, 3:1-12.Google Scholar
Goodenough, Ward 1956. Residence rules. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, 12:22–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goody, Jack 1976. Inheritance, property and women; some comparative considerations. In Family and inheritance: rural society in Western Europe 1200–1800, eds. Goody, Jack, Thirsk, Joan, and Thompson, E. P.. Cambridge: The University Press.Google Scholar
Hammel, E. A., AND Laslett, Peter 1974. Comparing household structure over time and between cultures. Comparative Studies in Society and History 16:73–109.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harris, M. 1968. The rise of anthropological theory. New York: Crowell.Google Scholar
Hobhouse, Leonard T., Wheeler, G. C. and Ginsberg, M. 1915. The material culture and social institutions of the simpler peoples. London: Chapman and Hall.Google Scholar
Jorgensen, Joseph G. 1969. Salish language and culture. Language Science Monographs, Vol. 3, Indiana University Publications.Google Scholar
Jorgensen, Joseph G. 1969. In Press. Western Indians. New York: W. H. Freeman.Google Scholar
Kluckhohn, F. H., AND Strodtbeck, F. 1961. Variations in value orientations. Evanston, Ill.: Row, Peterson.Google Scholar
Köbben, Andre J. F. 1973. Comparativists and non-comparativists in anthropology. In A handbook of method in cross-cultural anthropology, eds. Naroll, Raoul and Cohen, Ronald. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Kroeber, A. L. 1937. Part II: Analysis. In Culture element distributions: IV Porno, eds. Gifford, E. W. and Kroeber, A. L.. Universityof California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology, Vol. 37, pp. 117–253.Google Scholar
Kroeber, A. L. 1939a. Tribes surveyed. University of California Anthropological Records, Vol. 1, pp. 435–10.Google Scholar
Kroeber, A. L. 1939b. Local ethnographic and methodological inferences. In Culture element distributions: X Northwest California, Driver, Harold E.. University of California Anthropological Records Vol. 1, pp. 297–433.Google Scholar
Kroeber, A. L. 1944. Configurations of culture growth. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lévi-Strauss, Claude 1962. Lapense'e sauvage. Paris: Plon.Google Scholar
Lévi-Strauss, Claude 1963. Structural anthropology. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Lévi-Strauss, Claude 1970. The raw and the cooked. London: Jonathan Cape.Google Scholar
Lowie, Robert H. 1937. The history of ethnological theory. New York: Rinehart & Company.Google Scholar
Moore, Barrington Jr, 1966. Social origins of dictatorship and democracy. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Murdock, George P. 1949. Social structure. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Murdock, George P. 1957. World ethnographic sample. American Anthropologist 59:664–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nadel, S. F. 1952. Witchcraft in four African societies: an essay in comparison. American Anthropologist 54:18–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nader, Laura and Todd, Harry F. Jr, 1978. The disputing process–law in ten societies. New York: Columbia University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Naroll, Raoul 1973. Cross-cultural sampling. In A handbook of method in cultural anthropology, eds. Naroll, Raoul and Cohen, Ronald. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Naroll, Raoul 1973. Galton's problem. In A handbook of method in cultural anthropology, eds. Naroll, Raoul and Cohen, Ronald. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Naroll, Raoul, and Cohen, Ronald, eds. 1973. A handbook of method in cultural anthropology. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Radcliffe-Brown, A. R. 1930. The social organization of Australian tribes. Oceania 1:34–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spier, Leslie 1921. The sun dance of the Plains Indians: its development and diffusion. Anthropological Papers, American Museum of Natural History 16:451–527.Google Scholar
Spier, Leslie 1922. A suggested origin for gentile organization. American Anthropologist 24:487–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spier, Leslie 1925. The distribution of kinship systems in North America. University of Washington Publications in Anthropology 1:69–88.Google Scholar
Toynbee, Arnold 1935–1962. A study of history. London: Oxford University Press. 12 volumes.Google Scholar
Tylor, Edward B. 1889. On a method of investigating the development of institutions; applied to laws of marriage and descent. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol. 18, pp.245–56, 261–69.Google Scholar
Wallerstein, Immanuel 1974. The modern world-system. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
White, Douglas R. 1973. Mathematical anthropology. In Handbook of social and cultural anthropology, ed., Honigmann, John J.. Chicago: Rand McNally.Google Scholar
Whiting, Beatrice B. 1963. Six cultures. New York: John Wiley & Sons.Google Scholar