Table Of ContentTh ick Comparison
International Studies in
Sociology and Social
Anthropology
Series Editor
David Sciulli, Texas A&M University
Editorial Board
Vincenzo Cicchelli, Cerlis, Paris Descartes-CNRS
Benjamin Gregg, University of Texas at Austin
Carsten Q. Schneider, Central European University Budapest
VOLUME 114
Th ick Comparison
Reviving the Ethnographic Aspiration
Edited by
Th omas Scheff er and Jörg Niewöhner
LEIDEN • BOSTON
2010
On the cover: Photo comparing an austrich to a chicken egg taken by BMK/Wikipedia
Th is book is printed on acid-free paper.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Niewöhner, Jörg.
Th ick comparison : reviving the ethnographic aspiration / by Jorg Niewohner and
Th omas Scheff er.
p. cm. — (International studies in sociology and social anthropology)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-90-04-18113-7 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Ethnology—Methodology.
2. Ethnology—Research. I. Scheff er, Th omas. II. Title. III. Series.
GN345.N53 2010
305.80072—dc22
2009053745
ISSN 0074-8684
ISBN 978 90 04 18113 7
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CONTENTS
Foreword .............................................................................................. vii
Notes on Contributors ....................................................................... ix
Introduction Th ickening Comparison: On the Multiple Facets
of Comparability ............................................................................. 1
Jörg Niewöhner and Th omas Scheff er
Chapter One Comparability on Shift ing Grounds: How Legal
Ethnography diff ers from Comparative Law ............................. 17
Th omas Scheff er
Chapter Two Producing Multi-sited Comparability ................. 43
Estrid Sørensen
Chapter Th ree Re-describing Social Practices: Comparison as
Analytical and Explorative Tool .................................................. 79
Robert Schmidt
Chapter Four Producing Alternative Objects of Comparison
in Healthcare: Following a Web-based Technology for
Asthma Treatment through the Lab and the Clinic ................ 103
Henriette Langstrup and Brit Ross Winthereik
Chapter Five Contrasts and Comparisons: Th ree Practices of
Forensic Investigation .................................................................... 129
Amade M’charek
Chapter Six Comparison in the Wild and more Disciplined
Usages of an Epistemic Practice .................................................. 155
Katrin Amelang and Stefan Beck
Chapter Seven Making a Comparative Object ........................... 181
Kati Hannken-Illjes
vi contents
Chapter Eight On Positionality and its Comparability in the
Legal Context .................................................................................. 195
Alexander V. Kozin
Index ..................................................................................................... 221
FOREWORD
Beginning in 2006, two research groups, both engaged in ethnographic
inquiry, met in a series of meetings at Humboldt University’s
Department of European Ethnology to discuss how they compared in
their respective empirical work. One group was the Emmy Noether
group “Law in Action” based at the Free University Berlin and funded by
the German Research Council (DFG) to investigate criminal procedures
across diff erent national contexts. Th e other, the “Laboratory: Social
Anthropology & Life Sciences”, marks a collaboratory of diff erent
projects at the interface of medicine and social anthropology, funded
by the German Ministry of Education and Research as well as the
European Union and the Federal Administration of Berlin.
While the respective fi elds of law and life sciences could not be more
diff erent in many respects, the methodological challenges were very
similar: ethnographic work, i.e. participant observation and situated
interviewing, on diff erent case studies, by diff erent researchers, in dif-
ferent countries and in diff erent languages made constant comparison
a necessity. It also made these diff erent research eff orts very produc-
tive aff airs. We felt that we really gained much—analytically as well
as theoretically—from working in comparative contexts. Yet everyone
also knew the critique within our respective disciplines sociology and
anthropology: the need to refl ect and respect context; the aspiration
to avoid reductionist or mechanistic explanations; the interactive and
dialogical element of gathering data; and the impossibility to compare
‘whole’ contexts or indeed translate comprehensively between them.
Hence within this series of meetings it transpired very quickly that
comparing is more useful in research practice than current theory of
comparing in the qualitative disciplines would let it be. Th e impor-
tant critique of the 1980s and 90s and the call to a refl exivity of the
disciplines seemed to have solidifi ed into something more akin to an
habitus than a theoretical challenge; rather than urging further devel-
opment of theories of comparison, the critique seemed to stifl e engage-
ment with comparative methods. ‘Th is cannot work, because (. . .)’ or
‘this is unmatched’ was a natural ethnographic impulse on any eff ort
to compare.
viii foreword
Th us we felt the need to work on a more positive theoretical frame-
work for comparing: not in the sense of a best practice guide or a new
grand theory of comparison, but rather in an attempt to reinvigorate
the role of ethnographic comparison in qualitative social inquiry. We
did not want to just go for it but refl ect on how we produce compa-
rability in our daily empirical work; how objects of comparison are
constructed, how they travel and how they are modifi ed; how compa-
rability arises from diff erent kinds of involvement of the researcher;
how the complexity of local worlds becomes involved in producing
comparability; and, of course, how comparability fails, how the limits
of comparability need to be respected but how failure can also be pro-
ductive in the ethnographic endeavour.
We chose the term ‘thick comparison’ to refer to the fact that com-
paring as a research process thickens our analyses on diff erent levels
and in diff erent ways. In order to capture more modes of thick com-
parison, we invited esteemed colleagues from Denmark and from the
Netherlands—again from diff erent ethnographic fi elds—to join our
group. Th ey contributed with their own experiences from comparing
ethnographically. Th us all authors shared the same task: to retrace the
production of comparability in their own work and to elaborate on its
productivity for their specifi c ethnographic endeavour. Some chapters
in this volume have been developed from papers in a special issue of
Comparative Sociology in 2008. We take this opportunity to thank
the editor David Sciulli as well as our commentator and lively discus-
sant Robert Prus for their many comments, suggestions and critique.
Th ey have both been terrifi c intellectual sparring partners. We also
like to thank the many contributors to earlier discussions, the many
commentators along the way and those who have helped to review,
translate, correct and generally improve our writings.
We appreciate that each chapter individually perhaps falls a little short
of the intellectual promise of ‘thick comparison’ on diff erent accounts.
Yet considered relationally, i.e. read alongside each other and in com-
parative mode, we hope that readers will begin to fi nd our endeavour
interesting.
Th e editors
Berlin, June 2009
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Katrin Amelang received her MA in cultural anthropology and
political science from Goethe-University Frankfurt/Main. She moved
to Humboldt University Berlin, Department of European Ethnology,
in 2004 to work on the EU funded Project Challenges of Biomedicine—
Socio-cultural Contexts, European Governance and Bioethics. Her
current PhD project deals with an ethnographic study of post-op nor-
malisation strategies in organ transplantation and draws on feminist
anthropology and an anthropology of knowledge.
Stefan Beck is Professor for European Ethnology at Humboldt
University Berlin, Germany. He has conducted fi eldwork in Cyprus
and Germany focussing on genetic screenings, organ donation and
the social history of public health programs. His work concentrates on
knowledge practices in biomedicine, their social and cultural imple-
mentation and their impact on notions of health, body and shift -
ing confi gurations of solidarity and moral practices. Together with
colleagues he founded the Collaboratory: Social Anthropology and
LifeSciences at Humboldt University (http://www.csal.de) in 2004 as a
platform for interdisciplinary research and teaching at the crossroads
of medicine and sociocultural anthropology.
Kati Hannken-Illjes, born 1972, received her PhD in communica-
tion studies from the University of Halle. She has since worked on
the casework in German criminal proceedings as a member of the
research group comparative micro-sociology of criminal procedures
at the Free University Berlin and currently holds a lecturer position
in speech communication at the University Jena. Her research focuses
on the relationship of argumentation and narration, legal rhetoric and
communicative competence.
Alexander V. Kozin (Ph.D. in Philosophy of Communication)
is a Research Fellow at Freie Universitaet Berlin, where he partici-
pates in the international project “Comparative Microsociology of
Criminal Defense Proceedings.” His areas of specialization include
phenomenology, translation theory, ethnomethodology, conversation
