Comparative Method (in Anthropology)

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The comparative method was identified by anthropologist Edward Burnett Tylor in 1889. However, before wide use in anthropology, the comparative technique was more used by earlier writers.

 Description 
Tylor built the comparative method based on evolutionist philosophy, that is, he explained every phenomenon through its history and how it developed. The main focus of the comparative method was the order of cultural or social conditions of different societies. It was used to show a process of evolution. Anthropology developed during wide cultural contrasts. At the time, there were extreme comparisons made by new discoveries. The comparative method helped to search for some specific cultural items’ origins. The comparative method was also used to find how institutions and myths, and the relationships between races developed. The comparative method in anthropology doesn’t have one way of using it. It has many methods of comparison that made this practice confusing. The comparative method has many aspects, and the ‘technique’ of comparison is one of them. Anthropology has more versions of the comparative method than other disciplines do.

 Issues with the comparative method 
The comparative method received a lot of criticism, especially during early years of anthropology. For some anthropologists this method is used to show contrast over comparison. However, there are additional issues with this method. The four major problems of the comparative method are: the scope of comparison, the identification and classification, the aims of the comparison, and the design of comparison. Comparisons can’t be good when data are used by different theories, types of classification or ways of collection. 

 Scope 
How people pronounce and hear particular sounds depends on the way their own native (or first language) sounds. If compared, the sounds of native speakers and non-native speakers won’t be similar because of the learned practices of how sounds work. Because of these differences, some researchers thought that there is something wrong with the other language. The comparative method similarly works when two backgrounds meet. The first problem of the comparative method could arise when an anthropologist with her background compares the culture of others and tries to put her biases on it. Historically, some anthropologists tried to apply their “western” perspectives on (as they thought) “primitive” peoples. When comparing two cultures, they addressed another one as subordinate to the “western” one. Or used one as a unchanging material to contrast it with the “western” “progressive” culture. This issue is related to the scope of comparison when far away cultures are compared. There are many factors that make them different. By comparing too many different factors, it is impossible to formulate proper research questions.

 Identification 
The cultural factors’ identification and classification problem has two issues. First, some anthropologists compare first-hand data (data directly gathered from people participating in research) with data collected by others. Second, comparable data is collected by people working in different fields. For example, anthropologists use historians’ or geographers’ data. It is harder to work with data made by others because it is already classified; there are categories already made by different theories.

 Aims 
The aims of comparison can be a problem when cultural traits are taken out of the culture’s context and compared to make a strong contrast. People also rejected the comparative method because of extreme diffusionism (when cultures developed from one source) and evolutionism. It isn’t accurate to compare two cultures that are distant from each other as if they were created from the same historical source.

 Design 
The fourth main problem relates to how the samples and design of research are chosen.

 Anthropologists’ use of the comparative method 

 Franz Boas 
Franz Boas was the one who paid more attention to the method starting from 1896. He identified it as the comparative method of evolutionists and contrasted it to his historical method. Even though Boas criticized the comparative method, he wasn’t against it. He wanted to improve the comparative method by using his historical method. He emphasized the need for modified comparison. 

 Bronislaw Malinowski 
Bronislaw Malinowski wasn’t using the comparative method. However, one of his works shows that he didn’t mind it because he compared the modern and “ancient” societies having Oedipus complex.

 Alfred Radcliffe-Brown 
Alfred Radcliffe-Brown used the comparative method and thought that it isn’t replaceable. Anthropologists, in his opinion, should learn deeply various structural systems during fieldwork. That will give data for comparative study and can then be tested with other societies. 

 Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard 
E. E. Evans-Pritchard’s usage of the comparative method could be described in three phases. The first one is a frontal (or direct) comparison during and after fieldwork. At this phase an anthropologist is communicating and developing relations with his study participants. The second phase is a search for the underlying form of society through analysis. It is hard to see this underlying form, and it is full of abstractions. In the next phase, he analyzes various societies and compares the structures he created using these sets of abstractions. In this phase, Evans-Pritchard or other anthropologists who follow his method make relations between themselves by comparing each other’s found structures. However, Evans-Pritchard’s way of the comparative method is just one of many.

 Margaret Mead 
Margaret Mead did a comparative study when doing research with Samoa people. She thought that the history of Samoa culture can be reconstructed through comparative study. For that, she used data about family and political organization, inventions or religious practices. She believed that comparative study can also show specific tendencies in the development of a particular culture. Unlike some other anthropologists, Mead sometimes took Samoan practices more valuable than “western” ones. In her book Coming of Age in Samoa, she offered some examples that “western” culture could learn from the Samoans.

 Max Weber 
Max Weber was curious about comparative agrarian economies. He also did comparative research on various world religions about their religious ethics. He looked not only into the Protestant ethics. He also studied Buddhism, Hinduism, Chinese religion, and Judaism to see how religion influenced capitalism.

 Pierre Bourdieu 
Pierre Bourdieu used comparison. For example, he did a “native ethnography” (when researcher comes from the same society) in the French and in the Béarn education system after his experience in Algeria. 

 Clifford Geertz 
Clifford Geertz worked on comparative history.

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