To Contrast and Compare

ALAN MACFARLANE

[From Methodology and Fieldwork, edited by Vinay Kumar Srivastava (Oxford Univ. Press, Delhi, 2004)]

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The Necessity of Comparison

Any social scientist should be aware that he is indulging in comparison all

the time. In the case of history, the comparisons are usually in time, in that

of other social sciences, predominantly in space. The most familiar method

of the historian is to take his own society as the norm and then to see how

far the past is similar or different from this. This is also what an

anthropologist. sociologist. or economist tends to do, in the dimension of

space rather than time. 'Informally, comparison is built into the method of

the subject, for even in his first piece of field-work the anthropologist is

comparing the categories of his own society with those of the society he

studies. . .' (Pocock 1961: 90).

De Tocqueville's work illustrates such a method of comparison, revealed

in his memoirs: 'In my work on America... though I seldom mentioned

France, I did not write a page without thinking of her, and placing her as it

"were before me. And what I especially tried to draw out, and to explain in

the United States, was not the whole condition of that foreign society, but

the point,, in which it differs from our own, or resembles us. It is always by

noticing likenesses or contrasts that I succeeded in giving an

and accurate description. 1861. 1: 359). He did this, ultimately, not to

understand but France itself: 'for no one, who has studied and

considered France alone. will ever venture to say, understand the French

revolution' (1956: 21 ).

The necessity of comparison was stressed by the anthropologist Evans-

Pritchard: 'In the widest sense there is no other method. Comparison is,

of course, one of the essential procedures of all sciences and one of the

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elementary processes of human thought' (1963: 3). He was here following his

master Durkheim, who wrote that it is only possible to explain by making

comparisons. Without this, even simple description is scarcely possible; one

can scarcely describe a single fact, or one of which there are only rare ex-

amples, because one cannot see it well enough' (quoted in Lienhardt 1964: 30).

Hence a number of observers have noted that in order to understand one

phenomenon, one must place it in perspective or comparison to others. As

Robert Lowie put it, 'At the same time a phenomenon is understood only

in relation to others: "He little knows of England who only England knows."

Hence it is well to look at Western culture in perspective' (1950: 9).

The Purposes of Comparison

The comparative method is just one of many tools used by social scientists.

As with all tools, it is necessary to consider both why one is using them,

the purpose, and how best to use them.

Asking Questions

Distancing the over-familiar

A first use of the comparative method is to act like a reverse telescope.

pushing away things which are too close, so that a gap is created and one

can see them. This might be termed, 'distancing the (over) familiar'. or

turning the obvious into the unobvious (or 'nature' into 'culture*. in

anthropological terms).

One difficulty for all analysts is the strong pressure to leave unquestioned

(and hence unexplained) a great deal of behaviour in the past or in other

societies because it is similar to our own and hence self-evidently David Hume wrote, 'the

views the most familiar to us are apt, for that very reason, to escape us' (quoted in Dumont 1977: 19), or, as Braudel put it, '. . surprise and distance-those important aids to comprehension-are both equally necessary for an understanding of that which surrounds you

surrounds you so evidently that you can no longer see it clearly ' (quoted in

Burke 1972: 24). Likewise, Marx noted, 'Human history is like paleontology.

Owing to a certain judicial blindness even the best intelligences absolutely

fall to see the things which lie in front of their noses' ( 1964: 140). Or, as

Kluckhohn observed, 'it would scarcely be a fish that discovered the existence

of water' (quoted in Bohannan 1969: 14).(1) The difficulty was also alluded to

by Sir Henry Maine, who wrote that one of the major problems for all of this is

'the difficulty of believing that ideas which form part of our everyday mental

stock can really stand in need of analysis and examination' ( 1890: 171).

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The problem is acute for the student of his own culture who needs

some 'external fulcrum' in order to be aware of the central features of the society

in which he lives. Such a fulcrum is automatically present for an anthro-

pologist who works in an alien culture. Yet, even such an anthropologist

may need support; as Homans argued, 'when a man describes a society

which is not his own, he often leaves out those features which the society

has in common with his own society. He takes them for granted, and so his

description is distorted' (1960: 382).

This difficulty of studying 'the obvious', being too close to the subject,

was alluded to by Peter Laslett. 'This feeling that it is all obvious is a

curious and exasperating feature of the whole issue. . . the force of the

contrast between our world and the world which the historian undertakes

to describe has hitherto been somewhat indistinct. Without contrast there

cannot be full comprehension' (1971: 7).

The benefits of a wider knowledge of alternative social structures through

the comparative method acts as a 'distancer' of the familiar. This is prob-

ably what Bloch was referring to when he wrote that 'the comparative

methods in the hand of ethnographers has restored to us with a kind of

mental shock this sense of the difference, the exotic element, which is the

indispensable condition for a balanced understanding of the past' (1967:

47). For, as he wrote elsewhere, 'to speak of discovery is also to speak of

surprise and dissimilarity' (Bloch 1954: 120). Finally, to quote Dumont,

'To see our culture in its unity and specificity we must set it in perspective

by contrasting it with other cultures. Only so can we gain an awareness of

what otherwise goes without saying, the familiar and implicit basis of our

common discourse' (in Carrithers 1985: 94).

Familiarizing the distant

Equally problematic is the fact that many of the things we encounter in our

work are so unfamiliar and distant that we cannot get inside their logic or

'understand' them. In this difficulty, we need to use the method with the

telescope in its normal position; in other words, to bring the phenomena

closer. The difficulty was well described by David Hume: 'Let an object be

presented to a man of never so strong natural reason and abilities; if that

object be entirely new to him, he will not be able, by the most accurate

examination of its sensible qualities, to discover any of its causes or effects,'

(quoted in Winch 1958: 7). The usual temptation is either to avoid the

subject altogether or to dismiss it as irrational nonsense.

How does the comparative approach help? One way is through provid-

ing hypotheses concerning how an unfamiliar system can work. This may

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related to one of the two methods which the mathematician G. Polya

suggests are used to solve complex problems: 'ransack our memory for any

similar problem of which the solution is known' (quoted in Burgess 1982:

217). Now the solution may be 'known' in a sort of way through the studies

of others in other societies. Examples would be the insights which anthro-

pological studies of curious phenomena like the blood feud or witchcraft

gave to historians studying the same phenomena in the West.

The comparative method provides possible alternative models of how

things might be connected and what they might mean, it brings them

within our range of comprehension, hence partly overcoming Hume's

problem.

Making absences visible

A third important service the comparative method can provide is by

revealing absences. In all societies, many of the most interesting things are

the absences, and it is extremely difficult to be aware of these. What I

mean is rather well illustrated by Robert Smith, who recounts how a

Japanese scholar replied when he was asked why ancestor worship persists

in modem Japan: 'That is not an interesting question. The real question is

why it died out in the West' (1983: 152). Of course, both are interesting

questions-but the absence is certainly just as curious.

To take two examples, many of the most important features in the

English past were the absences; the weakness of kinship, the absence of

religious intolerance and political absolutism, the lack of group pressure.

The same is true in Japanese history. Many of the most significant facts

have been things that did not happen; the absence of foreign invasions and

the bubonic plague and the virtual absence of malaria and, in the late

Tokugawa period, of domesticated animals. These gaps can only be de-

tected if we have a strong positive image of what is 'normal' and then see

that in certain cases the predicted did not happen. The failure to use com-

parative models is one of the reasons why there has been little success in

explaining the origins of the various major changes which we collectively

term 'modernity' or 'development'. A comparative framework provides a

strong 'backcloth', against which the foreground can be seen. Without it

much of the foreground is invisible.

There are, however, dangers with this approach, especially if the 'ab-

sences' are analysed at the level of whole societies or civilizations, rather

than particular features. It is one thing to say that the domestic fly was largely

absent in Japan, another to say, as some have, that the Japanese lack a sense

of sin, the self, or principles in general. This is one of the reasons why labels

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like 'pre- industrial', 'pre-literate', 'pre-capitalist', with their evolutionary

and negative connotations, can be both misleading and dangerous.

One strategy which was adopted to deal with the ethnocentric and often

racist implications of the discovery of apparent absences was the develop-

ment of 'functional equivalents'. For example, in the first half of the twen-

tieth century it was shown that many features of Western societies were not

,absent' but 'disguised' and could be located by examining their func-

tional equivalents. The State re-appeared in the form of segmentary lin-

eage structures, the law as kinship reciprocities, Western philosophy and

science as witchcraft cosmologies and complex mythical systems. The les-

sons were learnt but since then, as Peter Burke comments, there has bee

an inevitable reaction against too much relativism and an over-emphasis

on deep similarities which ironed out differences. The problem now is to

recognize both similarities and differences without returning to those arro-

gant assumptions whereby one's own solutions are seen as intrinsically

,natural' and 'better' than all others. I shall return to this problem.

Testing Answers

Another use for the comparative method is the possibility it gives us to test

hypotheses. Let us look at this in relation to history. Although historians

are aware that they are not trying to establish laws, their 'descriptions'

always contain elements of causal connections of the form 'If this, then

that'. They are constantly on the lookout for both necessary and sufficient

causes, links of a specific and general kind. Starting with a problem such

as 'What caused the English Civil War?', 'What were the effects of

printing?', 'What caused the industrial revolution?', 'How did attitudes to

childhood change in early modern France?', the search is for causal

connections and co variations Having formulated a hypothesis, it is necessary

to move outside the particular instance to see if the connection holds more

widely. For instance, if Calvinism is held to be a necessary precondition for

,capitalism', are there 'capitalist' societies that are not Calvinist?

Thus, as Nadel wrote, 'Even if we are initially concerned only with a single

society and the appearance in it of a particular social fact (which we wish to

.explain'), our search for co-variations capable of illuminating our problem

will often lead us beyond that society to others, similar or diverse, since the

given society may not offer an adequate range of variations' (1951: 227).

It may be that social scientists will claim that they are not trying to

make generalizations, but a brief glance at their work shows that they

usually are; and any general statement has to be tested cross -comparatively.

Evans-Pritchard rightly argued that 'It is also evident that if any general

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statements are to be made about social institutions they can only be made

by comparison between the same type of institutions in a wide range of

societies' (1963: 3).

The necessity for broad comparison has been recognized by most who

have thought deeply about the origins ns of modern society and its likely

future development. In discussing the 'European Miracle' and its causes,

E.L. Jones wrote that 'Comparisons, or contrasts, with other civilizations

are essential for an assessment of Europe's progress. Otherwise conjec-

tures based on a winnowing of the European historical literature are uncon-

trolled' (1981: 153). In his equally ambitious 'The Unbound Prometheus',

Landes declared that 'The method of inquiry is to seek out these factors of

European development that seem to be both significant and different, that

set Europe apart, in other words, from the rest of the world. By holding

Europe up against the mirror of the most advanced non-European societies,

we should be able to discern some . . . of the critical elements in her

economic and technological precedence' (1972:14-15).

The general point is that one needs constantly to move back and forth

between the minute examination of a single system and the comparison of

whole systems. This was the method also advocated by the anthropologist

Radcliffe-Brown. He pointed out that while 'the study of a single society

may... afford occasion for hypotheses' these 'then need to be tested by

reference to other societies', for the single case 'cannot give demonstrated

results'. Nadel added that it is only 'if we include time perspective and

cultural change in our enquiry' that 'the necessary co-variations will be

available' (quoted in Nadel 1951: 240).

Methods of Comparison

Comparison can be undertaken in numerous ways, each appropriate to its

task, and one cannot lay down in advance which will be the best. All one

can do is to raise some of the alternatives. We may start by noting the three

types of approach distinguished by Durkheim.

(1) We could consider a single society at a given time and analyse the broad variations in particular modes of action or relationships occurring in that society. (2) We could consider several societies of generally similar nature which differ in certain modes of action or relationships; more precisely, we could here compare either different and perhaps contemporaneous societies, or the same society at different periods, if these exhibit some limited cultural change. (3) We could compare several, perhaps numerous, societies of widely different nature yet sharing some identical feature; or different periods. showing radical change, in the life of the same society (quoted in ibid.: 226).

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The Units of Comparison

The success of the comparative method will, of course, depend on the

comparison of things that can be compared. This consists of several features.

One is that the units compared are roughly of the same order of magnitude;

for instance, it would not be particularly fruitful to compare the handshake

in England with the family system in China.

Second, in order for comparison to be effective things must be of the

same class or order in some way. Thus to compare, say, marriage in America

with tea drinking in China would probably be fruitless. The selection of

the comparisons is all-important. Yet even by choosing something that

looks similar, one can be deceived. Words like 'city', 'marriage', 'fam-

ily', 'law' are notoriously loaded with ethnocentric assumptions. Even

such apparently obvious terms as 'house', 'meal', 'body' carry complex

sets of assumptions within each culture. As Evans-Pritchard puts it, 'it

was obvious that the method depended entirely on the units of compari-

son being of equivalent value. Are, for example, "monogamy" among the

Veddahs of Ceylon and "monogamy" in Western Europe units of the same

kind?' (1963: 9).

This is one of the reasons why anthropologists have tended to shy away

from comparing 'things' in themselves, and stress the need to compare the

relations of things. Pocock (1961: 114) argued that 'comparison can only

be conducted in terms of relations, and not of items or isolated institutions;

and this relational comparison begins from the moment that the research

worker approaches his material'; or as Evans-Pritchard (1951: 57) wrote,

.what the modem anthropologist compares are not customs, but systems of

relations'. Anthropologists have also reacted against what they take to be

the Frazerian tendency to wrench bits of culture out of their context. They

stress the need to compare a whole culture or social system; 'a solid and

thorough comparison of values is possible only between two systems taken

as wholes' (Dumont 1986: 243). This may be the reason why, as Peter

Burke points out, the most famous, and successful examples of comparison

are 'usually comparisons between examples of systems of social relations

(feudalism, capitalism, mercantilism, absolutism, colonialism, etc.)'.

Some of the necessary precautions are summarized by Baechler (1988:

40): 'we must compare what is comparable... for example, it would be

fruitless to compare the Europe of today with Africa South of the Sahara...

Points of comparison of the same order of size must be selected-not pre-

modem Europe on the one side and the rest of the world on the other, but

Europe and a particular historical episode that occurred in a spatial and

temporal framework of the same dimensions.'

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Controlled and General Comparison

One might note two major forms of comparison-general comparison

between, say, civilizations, and more limited comparisons, where the range

of difference is limited. The latter method of controlled comparison is

described by Loure: 'It is the method of intensively comparing groups of

common derivation, or with a basically identical culture, yet differing in

some specific factor, the point being to ascertain what other elements

likewise differ' (1950: 47).

Contrast and Compare

There are two separate operations which need to take place in comparative

work, the establishing of similarities and the establishing of differences.

Rousseau recognized that different methods were required to establish each

of these, and that one could not be done without the other. 'One needs to

look near at hand if one wants to study men; but to study man one must

learn to look from afar: one must first observe differences in order to discover

attributes. (2) Rousseau implies that the final aim is to reach the deeper

similarities, the attributes, the 'psychic unity of man' as it was later to be

called.

More recently, some anthropologists suggested the reverse, namely, that

we are more concerned with differences than similarities. Evans-Pritchard

wrote that 'I would like to place emphasis on the importance for social

anthropology, as a comparative discipline, of differences, because it could

be held that in the past the tendency has often been to place the stress on

similarities. . . whereas it is the differences which would seem to invite

sociological explanation. This is an involved question, for institutions have

to be similar in some respects before they can be different in others. . .'

(1963: 17). Pocock (1961: 90-91) echoed his views. 'More formal com-