ABSTRACT
Comparison is a complicated activity. The complexity involves recognizing not just that comparison is about difference as much as similarity but also that it turns out to be more about the one doing the comparison than it is about some supposedly enduring or essential feature in the two items being compared. Comparison is not just a way of producing knowledge but also an invested process that produces knowledge with different investments and effects. Comparison arose on account of the inevitable failure of local understandings when confronted with new and unanticipated information. The chapter discusses how to articulate one’s comparative work—making as plain as possible the larger concern or interest by means of which one has placed two items, two behaviors, two groups of people beside each other in our mind’s eye.
