The Value of Comparison

Peter van der Veer

Published by Duke University Press 2016

The Value of Comparison

Peter van der Veer
Preface by: Thomas Gibson

In the series The Lewis Henry Morgan Lectures

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822374220

Overview
Contents

About this book

In The Value of Comparison Peter van der Veer highlights anthropology's continuing ability to gain insights on the whole through the comparative study of the particular and unique while critiquing the quantitative social sciences for their sweeping generalizations.

Author / Editor information

Peter van der Veer is Director at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity at Göttingen, Germany and Distinguished University Professor at Utrecht University. He is the author of several books, including The Modern Spirit of Asia: The Spiritual and the Secular in China and India.

Reviews

"The Value of Comparison gives a rather unflinching critique of Western cultural assumptions while firmly seated in the very field it scrutinizes. . . . [Van der Veer] does not merely critique traditional methods and pathways of analysis used in sociological research, but offers concrete examples and discussions where a more nuanced and complex comparative method can be applied and produce better results."

-- Juli L. Gittinger Reading Religion

“Self-consciously intent on fragmenting certainty, Peter van der Veer makes a very convincing case for the productive instability and provocative inconclusiveness of definitive conclusions. As all good books do, this one opens outward to suggest as many questions as it answers.”

-- Joseph S. Alter Pacific Affairs

"Van der Veer’s project is not to tell the origin stories of anthropology, but look to the future where the comparative anthropological lens will focus on crucial sociocultural ‘fragments’ to dismantle the logic of Western modernity and rationality. This informative and theoretically sophisticated work will serve as an important reckoner to that end."

-- Debjani Chakravarty International Sociology

"[A] fresh and lucid text. . . . Putting comparison back on the agenda is timely and necessary not only for organizing our research projects but also for finding a way out of the partly imposed and partly self-chosen relative isolation in which anthropologists often find themselves in academia and public debate."

-- Birgit Meyer HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory

"I challenge any reader not to come away from it feeling both wiser and better informed about its empirical subject matter, and invigorated about the pragmatic power of anthropological comparison."

-- Matei Candea HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Foreword Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	xi
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
PART I. THE FRAGMENT AND THE WHOLE
1. The Comparative Advantage of Anthropology Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	25
2. Market and Money: A Critique of Rational Choice Theory Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	48
PART II. CIVILIZATION AND COMPARISON Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	59
3. Keeping the Muslims Out: Concepts of Civilization, Civility, and Civil Society in India, China, and Western Europe Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	61
4. The Afterlife of Images Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	80
PART III. COMPARING EXCLUSION
5. Lost in the Mountains: Notes on Diversity in the Southeast Asian Mainland Massif Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	107
6. Who Cares? Care Arrangements and Sanitation for the Poor in India and Elsewhere Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	130
A Short Conclusion Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	147
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	155
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	171
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	183

Language: English
Publisher: Duke University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 208

eBook

Published: May 19, 2016
ISBN: 9780822374220