This paper is a systematic analysis of the comparative method. Its emphasis is on both the limitations of the method and the ways in which, despite these limitations, it can be used to maximum advantage. The comparative method is defined and analyzed in terms of its similarities and differences vis-a-vis the experimental and statistical methods. The principal difficulty facing the comparative method is that it must generalize on the basis of relatively few empirical cases. Four specific ways in which this difficulty may be resolved are discussed and illustrated: (1) increasing the number of cases as much as possible by means of longitudinal extension and a global range of analysis, (2) reducing the property space of the analysis, (3) focusing the comparative analysis on “comparable” cases (e.g., by means of area, diachronic, or intranation comparisons), and (4) focusing on the key variables. It is argued that the case study method is closely related to the comparative method. Six types of case studies (the atheoretical, interpretative, hypothesis-generating, theory-confirming, theory-infirming, and deviant case analyses) are distinguished, and their theoretical value is analyzed.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/1955513.pdf

Comparative Politics and the Comparative Method

Every year, around the time of the meetings of the American Anthropological Association, the New York Times asks a Big Name anthropologist to contribute an op-ed piece on the state of the field. These pieces tend to take a rather gloomy view. A few years ago, for example, Marvin Harris suggested that anthropology was being taken over by mystics, religious fanatics, and California cultists; that the meetings were dominated by panels on shamanism, witchcraft, and “abnormal phenomena”; and that “scientific papers based on empirical studies” had been willfully excluded from the program (Harris 1978). More recently, in a more sober tone, Eric Wolf suggested that the field of anthropology is coming apart. The sub-fields (and sub-sub-fields) are increasingly pursuing their specialized interests, losing contact with each other and with the whole. There is no longer a shared discourse, a shared set of terms to which all practitioners address themselves, a shared language we all, however idiosyncratically, speak (Wolf 1980).

/pdf/theory-in-anthropology-since-the-sixties-3udaode8pr.pdf

Theory in Anthropology since the Sixties

Distinguishing four sources of power in human societies – ideological, economic, military and political – The Sources of Social Power traces their interrelations throughout human history In this first volume, Michael Mann examines interrelations between these elements from neolithic times, through ancient Near Eastern civilizations, the classical Mediterranean age and medieval Europe, up to just before the Industrial Revolution in England It offers explanations of the emergence of the state and social stratification; of city-states, militaristic empires and the persistent interaction between them; of the world salvation religions; and of the particular dynamism of medieval and early modern Europe It ends by generalizing about the nature of overall social development, the varying forms of social cohesion and the role of classes and class struggle in history First published in 1986, this new edition of Volume 1 includes a new preface by the author examining the impact and legacy of the work

The sources of social power

The revolution that wasn't: a new interpretation of the origin of modern human behavior.

Language in relation to a unified theory of the structure of human behavior, 2nd rev. ed.

The Urban Revolution

Man makes himself

The Dawn of European Civilization

PROFESSOR V. GORDON GHILDE, who died in the Blue Mountains of his native Australia in 1957 soon after retiring from the Directorship of the London University Institute of Archaeology, was one of the great pre-historians of the world. More perhaps than any other man he showed how by using the data won by archaeologists and natural scientists it was possible to gain a new view of what constituted human history. Inevitably some of the books in which he summarized, with brilliant mastery of detail, the current situation in different fields of prehistoric archaeology have begun to lose something of their value for modern students. The general works in which he opened up new and often vast perspectives on the other hand are in many cases classics that repay constant re-reading and are likely to retain their value for a long time to come. Of these one of the most important is the present volume, originally published in 1941 and last revised in 1954.

V. Gordon Childe

Papers

The Urban Revolution

Man makes himself

The Dawn of European Civilization

What happened in history

The Danube in prehistory