ABSTRACT
The French historian Marc Bloch described comparison as a four-fold project, namely (1) selecting, in one or several different social environments, two or more phenomena that, at fi rst sight, show certain analogies; (2) to describe the lines of their evolution; (3) to observe their similarities and differences; which (4), as far as possible, should be explained (Bloch 1963: 17). Comparison is widely practiced and much discussed across the sciences, including the humanities and the social sciences.
