Comparer. Options et inflexions d’une pratique de recherche

Abstract

Comparative practices have evolved considerably over the last 20 to 30 years. The fields researched, objects, issues, methods and theorizations have expanded. Though we do not claim to fully account for that effervescence in this introduction, we will attempt to pinpoint a few of the theoretical and methodological matters that shape comparative research today. Two approaches-societal analysis on the one hand, the varieties of capitalism on the other-have had a long lasting influence on the comparative studies of labor, social systems and production organizations. We next turn to the ways comparative practices have recently been developed around a series of today well established theoretical and methodological issues: the critical assessment of the relevance of the national dimension, and how to empirically inform and conceptually go beyond that level of analysis; the variety of levels of reality to be compared, and of comparative analytical scales, how they interconnect; the homogeneous or heterogeneous nature of the spaces compared and where and when to reason in terms of systems or models; differentiating the entities being compared and taking interconnections into account, as well as the circulations or hybridization that make them comparable; aligning the categories that organize equivalence; the variability of protocols in empirical surveys and the need to adjust them, etc. All these matters trigger lively debates in present-day comparative work. This is a valuable indication of the vitality of this field of research.

The Micro-Foundations of Employment Systems: An Empirical Case Study of Britain and France

“…The strength and popularity of such studies lies precisely in their power of synthesis -their ability to illustrate national specificities in a synthetic and coherent portrait. Yet, recent contributions have questioned the very concept of a national model (Demazière et al, 2013;Dumitru, 2014). One strand of this more recent literature emphasises the specificity of employment relations along firm, regional or sectoral dimensions (Almond and Ferner, 2006;Doellgast et al 2009;Bechter et al, 2012;Jaerhling and Méhaut, 2013;Bechter and Brandl, 2015).…”