Incorporating Comparisons in the Rift

This chapter discusses the four comparative strategies historical sociolo-gists use to explain social variation and changing geopolitical arrangements across time and space. It describes the strengths and limitations of three conventional methods of comparison, namely, the hermeneutic, experimen-tal and encompassing approaches. ¹ It then lays out an alternative, incorporating comparative approach. Incorporating comparison recognizes that general world contradictions and particular inter-local dynamics both play pivotal roles in reconfiguring the world’s geopolitical landscapes. It helps uncover the significance of geo-cultural and geo-political differences as key elements making strong innovations in everyday practices and institutions possible. It is often when people begin to combine dissimilar tactics or mis-apply solutions from one context to a new and distinctive one that they unintentionally disrupt long-standing patterns and open space for radically new actions and thinking to take hold. Joining and reorganizing the reach and application of practices across disparate places and groups is one of the principal ways that widespread, unprecedented changes happen. One of the most compelling aspects of incorporating comparison is that it does not treat places, nations, nation-states or nation-state systems as fixed, self-perpetuating entities, but rather as dynamic, historically changing and mutually constituting configurations. ²