Historical Comparison Re-considered

Abstract

Comparative analysis is a mode of research, that due to its outstanding merits is widely used within many fields of scientific inquiry. Focusing on its application in historical research, this article aims to contribute to a more systematic discussion of some of the methodological strategies associated with this mode of analysis. For this purpose, this article presents first a few typologies regarding the functions and leverages of comparative analysis. In the next step different styles in which comparative method is applied are exemplified, with especial attention paid to the comparative studies of large-scale, macro-level societal changes. This article ends then with a critical discussion of the potentials and limitations of comparison as a methodological strategy of generating historical generalisations.Keywords: Development, Euro-centrism, Historical generalisations, Modernisation, Social change As a scientific method, comparison refers to the research approach in which two or more cases are explicitly contrasted to each other with regard to a specific phenomenon or along a certain dimension in order to pinpoint otherwise unobservable similarities and differences among the cases; and as a method strategy, comparison plays an important part in the most diverse branches of the humanities and the social sciences alike. Whereas its early intellectual roots go as far back as to the Antiquity, this mode of inquiry seems for the present to be more fashionable than ever before, as it is industriously applied in nearly all disciplines and applied to the study of almost any topic, including the study of the working conditions across nations, differences of life values within a single societal context, contrasts of face-work in various cultures, varieties of written documents in different countries, and much more (Allik, et. al. 2010;Drobni, et. al. 2010;Droogers 2005;Magun & Rudnev 2010;Merkin & Ramadan 2010;Suzuki 2010). Yet, despite this widespread and inter-disciplinary application, regretfully little attention is paid to this method as such, and it is only occasionally that the potentials and limitations of this strategy receive adequate treatment in social scientific method textbooks. Given the insufficient attention paid to various methodological questions linked to the use of comparison, the present article aims to discus some aspects of the question. The overall ambition and the chief purpose here is to contribute to the systematic and serious treatment that the issue of comparison deserves by exploring the special conditions and possibilities as well as the particular difficulties and limitations of this method to generate scientific knowledge.The chief objective of the article is sought by exploring the various theoretical functions attached to comparison as a method strategy. It therefore begins with a short history of this method, demonstrating the variety of its uses in classical and modern social thought. The article then proceeds by discussing the common purposes normally pursued by its applicat...

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