ABSTRACT
For generations of anthropologists, comparison has been at the core of the discipline. It has been envisaged differently at different points in time, as a comparison either of parts or wholes, or of past or present cultural patterns, but it was there-the implicit yardstick of the scholarly endeavour. The yardstick could be used for measuring differences in time, comparing stages of evolution, growth or mentality, or more often, differences in space, comparing different societies, institutions or concepts in the ethnographic present. In the twentieth century, the comparative mode was invariably fuelled by the tradition of fieldwork and its holistic implications.
