Critique, Comparison, Suffering, and the Middle East

Abstract

This paper recapitulates two influential JRAI articles to discuss comparison in anthropology. Charles Lindholm's 1995 article criticized the then new, now well-established, trend in Middle East ethnography for its radical emphasis on particularism and lack of theorization, driven by fears of de-humanizing subjects. In turn, Joel Robbins's 2013 article proposed an "anthropology of the good" as a substitute to the particularism of the anthropology of the "suffering subject". This would reinstate the notion of cultural diversity and its comparative vocation as touchstones of contemporary anthropology. Connecting these articles is a discussion of Middle East and Palestine ethnography's major shift in the 1970's to an anthropology of suffering reflected in anthropology at large. The conclusion is that suffering, just as comparison, must be qualified. Thus, qualified comparison must be the foundation to anthropological critiques of Western reason as much as it is to classical cultural critique.