The Art and Craft of Comparison

A call to arms for researchers to embrace their comparative intuition and combine in-depth stories with general lessons from their research.

An alternative approach to the two orthodoxies that dominate the study of comparative politics: detailed case studies and quantitative analysis. The Art and Craft of Comparison provides practical rules of thumb, and many examples, to help readers understand how they might compare even the most unlikely contexts.Is it possible to compare French presidential politics with village leadership in rural India? Most social scientists are united in thinking such unlikely juxtapositions are not feasible. Boswell, Corbett and Rhodes argue that they are possible. This book explains why and how. It is a call to arms for interpretivists to embrace creatively comparative work. As well as explaining, defending and illustrating the comparative interpretive approach, this book is also an engaging, hands-on guide to doing comparative interpretive research, with chapters covering design, fieldwork, analysis and writing. The advice in each revolves around 'rules of thumb', grounded in experience, and illustrated through stories and examples from the authors' research in different contexts around the world. Naturalist and humanist traditions have thus far dominated the field but this book presents a real alternative to these two orthodoxies which expands the horizons of comparative analysis in social science research.