Thick Comparison

by Scheffer, Thomas; Niewohner, Jorg

• ISBN13: 9789004181137
• ISBN10: 900418113X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-04-30
• Publisher: Brill Academic Pub

Summary

In ethnographic inquiry, comparing is fraught with difficulties, never complete and often fails. Yet it remains a strangely productive mode of working. "Thick comparison" develops and reflects on the production of comparability as a fruitful process in ethnographic research.

Author Biography

Thomas Scheffer, PhD (1995) in Sociology, University of Bielefeld. Scheffer has directed the research group Comparative Micro-Sociology of Criminal Procedures at the Free University Berlin and has recently received a Heisenberg Scholarship to teach and conduct political ethnography at the Department of European Ethnology, Humboldt University Berlin. Jrg Niewhner, PhD (2001) in Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, works and teaches at the Department of European Ethnology, Humboldt University Berlin. His current comparative ethnographic research focuses on cardiovascular prevention practices in the everyday life of research, clinic and general practice.

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. vii
Notes on Contributors	p. ix
Introduction: Thickening Comparison: On the Multiple Facets of Comparability	p. 1
Comparability on Shifting Grounds: How Legal Ethnography differs from Comparative Law	p. 17
Producing Multi-sited Comparability	p. 43
Re-describing Social Practices: Comparison as Analytical and Explorative Tool	p. 79
Producing Alternative Objects of Comparison in Healthcare: Following a Web-based Technology for Asthma Treatment through the Lab and the Clinic	p. 103
Contrasts and Comparisons: Three Practices of Forensic Investigation	p. 129
Comparison in the Wild and more Disciplined Usages of an Epistemic Practice	p. 155
Making a Comparative Object	p. 181
On Positionality and its Comparability in the Legal Context	p. 195
Index	p. 221
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