Table Of ContentHow People Compare
This book focuses on comparison in anthropology, turning an
ethnographic lens onto the diversity of comparative practice. It seeks to
understand how, why and with what consequences diversely situated groups
of people – many of whom operate on radically different premises to pro-
fessional anthropologists – make comparisons, above all, between them-
selves and real or imagined others. What motivates people to compare,
what techniques or logics do they employ, and what are the most likely
outcomes – both intended and unintended? How do comparative practices
reflect, reinforce or refuse uneven relations of power? And finally, what can
a rejuvenated comparative anthropology learn from the anthropology of
comparison? The volume develops a dialogue between scholars with long-
term ethnographic engagement in a variety of contexts around the world
and is particularly valuable reading for those interested in anthropological
methodology and theory.
Mathijs Pelkmans is a professor in the Department of Anthropology at the
London School of Economics and Political Science, UK.
Harry Walker is an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology
at the London School of Economics and Political Science, UK.
London School of Economics Monographs on Social
Anthropology
Managing Editor: Mathijs Pelkmans
The Monographs on Social Anthropology were established in 1940 and aim
to publish results of modern anthropological research of primary interest
to specialists. The continuation of the series was made possible by a grant
in aid from the Wenner-G ren Foundation for Anthropological Research,
and more recently by a further grant from the Governors of the London
School of Economics and Political Science. Income from sales is returned
to a revolving fund to assist further publications. The Monographs are
under the direction of an Editorial Board associated with the Department
of Anthropology of the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Titles include:
Affective Encounters
Everyday Life among Chinese Migrants in Zambia
Di Wu
Slavery and Essentialism in Highland Madagascar
Ethnography, History, Cognition
Denis Regnier
How People Compare
Edited by Mathijs Pelkmans and Harry Walker
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How People Compare
Edited by Mathijs Pelkmans and
Harry Walker
First published 2023
by Routledge
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© 2023 selection and editorial matter, Mathijs Pelkmans and Harry Walker;
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of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been
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British Library Cataloguing- in- Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 9781032229973 (hbk)
ISBN: 9781032255149 (pbk)
ISBN: 9781003283669 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/ 9781003283669
Typeset in Sabon
by Newgen Publishing UK
Contents
List of contributors vii
Acknowledgements ix
1 On the act of comparison: An introduction 1
MATHIJS PELKMANS
PART I
The art of comparing 23
2 In defence of bad comparisons? Comparisons and their
motivations in Indonesia’s Riau Islands 25
NICHOLAS J. LONG
3 Recognizing uniqueness: On (not) comparing the World
Nomad Games 47
MATHIJS PELKMANS
4 Totemic comparisons; or, how things compose in
Southeast Solomon Islands 68
MICHAEL W. SCOTT
5 All alike anyway: An Amazonian ethics of
incommensurability 85
HARRY WALKER
vi Contents
PART II
Comparison at work 105
6 Principles or pragmatics? Debt advice as a
comparative encounter 107
DEBORAH JAMES
7 Long, hard labours of comparison among Japanese
salarymen 128
MITCHELL W. SEDGWICK
8 Uncomfortable comparisons: Anthropology,
development, and mixed feelings 153
KATY GARDNER AND JULIA QERMEZI HUANG
9 Implicit comparisons, or why it is inevitable to study
China in comparative perspective 172
HANS STEINMÜLLER AND STEPHAN FEUCHTWANG
10 Afterword: The social lives of comparison 191
HARRY WALKER
Index 200
Contributors
Stephan Feuchtwang is an Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the
London School of Economics. His most recent books include the edited
volume Handbook on religion in China (Elgar, 2020) and, with Michael
Rowlands, Civilisation recast: Theoretical and historical perspectives
(Cambridge UP, 2019).
Katy Gardner is Professor of Anthropology at the London School of
Economics. Her research has focused on transnational migration from
Bangladesh to the UK; ageing, the life course and migration; the anthro-
pology of development; extractive industries and CSR in Bangladesh and,
most recently, couples counselling and divorce in Dhaka.
Julia Qermezi Huang is Assistant Professor of Anthropology of Development
at the University of Edinburgh. Her research focuses on social enterprise
and the use of new technologies, data practices and markets for poverty
alleviation. She is the author of To be an entrepreneur: Social enterprise
and disruptive development in Bangladesh (Cornell UP, 2020).
Deborah James is Professor of Anthropology at the London School of
Economics. Her book Money from nothing: Indebtedness and aspir-
ation in South Africa (Stanford UP, 2015) explores the lived experience of
debt for those many millions who attempt to improve their positions (or
merely sustain existing livelihoods) in emerging economies. She has also
done research on advice (especially debt advice) encounters in the context
of the UK government’s austerity programme.
Nicholas J. Long is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the London
School of Economics. He has published extensively on the anthropology
of Indonesia and, more recently, on COVID-1 9 lockdowns. His article
‘Suggestions of Power’ won the 2019 Stirling Prize for Best Published
Work in Psychological Anthropology.
Mathijs Pelkmans is Professor of Anthropology at the London School
of Economics. His most recent books include the edited volume
Ethnographies of doubt: Faith and uncertainty in contemporary societies
viii List of contributors
(IB Tauris, 2013) and Fragile conviction: Changing ideological landscapes
in urban Kyrgyzstan (Cornell UP, 2017).
Michael W. Scott is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the London
School of Economics. He is the author of The severed snake: matrilineages,
making place, and a Melanesian Christianity in Southeast Solomon
Islands (Carolina Academic Press, 2007). Recently, his article ‘How the
missionary got his mana: Charles Elliott Fox and the power of name-
exchange in Solomon Islands’ won the Australian Anthropological
Society’s 2021 Article Prize.
Mitchell W. Sedgwick is Senior Visiting Fellow in the Department of
Anthropology of the London School of Economics. Among other works,
he is the author of ‘Entwined biographies of work and trauma: Taking
time in the study of corporations’, Social Anthropology 26:1 (2018), and
Globalisation and Japanese organisational culture: An ethnography of a
Japanese corporation in France (Routledge, 2007).
Hans Steinmüller is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the London
School of Economics. He is the author of Communities of compli-
city: Everyday ethics in rural China (Berghahn, 2013), and co-e ditor of
Irony, cynicism, and the Chinese state (Routledge, 2016).
Harry Walker is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the London School
of Economics. He is the author of Under a watchful eye: Self, power
and intimacy in Amazonia (University of California Press, 2012) and
co- editor of Values of happiness: Toward an anthropology of purpose
in life (University of Chicago Press, 2017). He is currently working on
moral and political emotions and the concept of justice.
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Acknowledgements
More than most books, How People Compare has a history that is
deeply entwined with a particular institutional context. It began its life in
conversations among colleagues in the Anthropology department at the
London School of Economics and Political Science, prompted, in the first
instance, by an exercise aimed at identifying thematic common ground in the
work we were doing as scholars, and thereby making a case for the merits
of our distinctive ‘research environment’. The conversations soon exceeded
their initial remit, and so we decided to press on with a dedicated work-
shop. Though the book does not attempt to define anything like a distinctive
‘LSE- style’ approach to comparison, we hope that the discussion and debate
facilitated by a common institutional background has borne some fruit here.
The LSE Monographs on Social Anthropology series seemed a particularly
apt home, for all the same reasons of course. We are grateful to all the
attendees of the initial workshop, and to our department for its ongoing
support and encouragement. We also gratefully acknowledge funding
received from the European Research Council under the European Union’s
Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No
715725).
