How People Compare (LSE Monographs on Social Anthropology)

Cover
Half Title
Series Information
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
List of Contributors
Acknowledgements
1 On the Act of Comparison: An Introduction
	Swiping Through …
	Unstable Grounds
	Prickly Connections
	Comparing Acts of Comparison?
	Notes
	References
Part I The Art of Comparing
	2 In Defence of Bad Comparisons? Comparisons and Their Motivations in Indonesia’s Riau Islands
		Initial Motivations
		The Psychodynamics of Comparison
		Comparison in the Riau Islands
		Comparison’s Motivations: Person-Centred Perspectives
		Implications for Anthropological Practice
		Acknowledgements
		Notes
		References
	3 Recognizing Uniqueness: On (Not) Comparing the World Nomad Games
		Celebrating Cultural Uniqueness On the World Stage
		Projecting Uniqueness and Seeking Recognition
		Seeking Uniqueness and Recognizing It
		Recognition, By Comparison
		Notes
		References
	4 Totemic Comparisons; Or, How Things Compose in Southeast Solomon Islands
		Deep Ontologies as Modes of Comparison: a Compositionist Approach
		Arosi: Adumbration and Its Methods of Comparison
		Conclusion: No Comparison Without Competition
		References
	5 All Alike Anyway: An Amazonian Ethics of Incommensurability
		Life in a World of Others
		The Relativity of Ethnicity
		Wither the Third Term?
		In Praise of Likeness
		Desingularisation and the State
		Conclusion
		Notes
		References
Part II Comparison at Work
	6 Principles Or Pragmatics?: Debt Advice as a Comparative Encounter
		Cases and Comparisons
			Case 1: ‘Disrupting Attachments’ in the UK
			Case 2: Psychic Self-Blame Vs Relational Pragmatism
			Case 3: ‘Plunder’ and ‘Claw Back’ of Funds in South Africa
			Case 4: Temporal Tactics in South Africa
		Conclusion
		Acknowledgements
		Notes
		References
	7 Long, Hard Labours of Comparison Among Japanese Salarymen
		Introduction
			Staging the Field
			Intimacies of Exotic Work
		Intertwined Bases of Comparison in Japan: Ethnic Homogeneity, Historical Uniqueness and the Sociological Underpinnings of Hierarchy
			The Cultural Naturalization of Homogeneity and Bounded Japanese Ethnicity
			Cultural Naturalization of Japan’s Longue Durée Historical Trajectory and Ownership of Japan’s Late 20th Century ‘Economic Miracle’
			Foundations of Comparison: Hierarchy in the Social Construction of the Japanese Self
		The Formal Organization of Japanese Corporations Abroad: French and Thai Disjunctures
		Distinctions In/of French ‘Cultural’ Capital
		Intimate Movements of Thai ‘Social’ Capital
			Hardball: Golf as Japanese Corporate Idiom
			In the Space of the Thai, at the Margins of the Japanese
		Conclusion
		Notes
		References
	8 Uncomfortable Comparisons: Anthropology, Development, and Mixed Feelings
		Introduction
		The Exemplar
			The Exemplar for Development
			The Exemplar for Anthropology
		Gender Training
		Conclusion
		Notes
		References
	9 Implicit Comparisons, Or Why It Is Inevitable to Study China in Comparative Perspective
		What Is China?
		China in Comparative Perspective
		Implicit Comparisons in the Study of China
			Society and Individualism
			Empire and the Compulsion to Find Coherence
			Implicit Comparisons, Shared Fictions, and Complicity
		Conclusion
		Notes
		References
	10 Afterword: The Social Lives of Comparison
		Are There Cultures of Comparison?
		What Does It Feel Like to Compare?
		The Denial of Comparability
		Shifting the Frame
		Comparative Anthropology and the Anthropology of Comparison
		References
Index