In The Value of Comparison Peter van der Veer makes a compelling case for using comparative approaches in the study of society and for the need to resist the simplified civilization narratives popular in public discourse and some social theory. He takes the quantitative social sciences and the broad social theories they rely on to task for their inability to question Western cultural presuppositions, demonstrating that anthropology's comparative approach provides a better means to understand societies. This capacity stems from anthropology's engagement with diversity, its fragmentary approach to studying social life, and its ability to translate difference between cultures. Through essays on topics as varied as iconoclasm, urban poverty, Muslim immigration, and social exclusion van der Veer highlights the ways that studying the particular and the unique allows for gaining a deeper knowledge of the whole without resorting to simple generalizations that elide and marginalize difference.
- Cover
- Contents
- Foreword by Thomas Gibson
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part I. The Fragment and the Whole
- 1. The Comparative Advantage of Anthropology
- 2. Market and Money: A Critique of Rational Choice Theory
- Part II. Civilization and Comparison
- 3. Keeping the Muslims Out: Concepts of Civilization, Civility, and Civil Society in India, China, and Western Europe
- 4. The Afterlife of Images
- Part III. Comparing Exclusion
- 5. Lost in the Mountains: Notes on Diversity in the Southeast Asian Mainland Massif
- 6. Who Cares? Care Arrangements and Sanitation for the Poor in India and Elsewhere
- A Short Conclusion
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
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