ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the key role that comparison plays in the production of distinctively anthropological knowledge. It also shows that anthropologists always build portrayals of the people they study by comparison with themselves, with what they know about their own society, and also with other anthropological accounts of other peoples. Comparison between self and other lies at the core of Christine Helliwell’s article and is also the axis on which all ethnographic writing revolves: all ethnographers use themselves and their knowledge of their own environments as their starting point for understanding and writing about their subjects. Ethnographic writing is inherently comparative because it always explains particular ways of living and thinking by reference to others. Comparison is used as tool to enable the ethnographer to foreground and elucidate distinctive elements of their ethnographic material and analysis, rather than to create grand theories of human behaviour.
