Interpretive Practices of comparison

Panel Chairs:

Maria José Freitas, Zuyd University of Applied Sciences Maastricht (NL), m.j.freitas@hszuyd.nl

Abstract:

This discussion on practices of comparison starts from an understanding that the meaning of a concept like 'comparative analysis' changes over time and space. The discussion goes beyond comparative research as something wedded to statistics, a view that frames societies as independent constructs free from social and cultural backdrops. In his paper presented in the 2008 panel, Robert Adcock (2008:19) put forward the notion, concerning the link between situated practice and ideas, that one cannot "abstract the practice of comparison from the broad web of beliefs shaping their use". This suggests that researchers doing comparative research could develop reflective research designs that embrace the presuppositions of interpretive scholarship. Through personal engagement and deliberation with informants - absent of a priori hallmarks - interpretive researchers can study the interplay between commonalities and differences as these transform from one context, or moment, to another.    

Although 'doing' comparative research can mean drawing on the 'comparative method' or developing artifacts like 'good-practice reports', this panel develops comparison as: a dynamic practice done by people to co-generate ways of collective knowing.  The practice-centered, iterative nature of the latter form of comparison fits interpretive paradigms because it presents comparison as a social practice rather than an individual activity. Accordingly, comparison embodies a process of meaning-making based on constructivist notions of knowledge. As a social practice, comparison addresses how personal research experiences are shared and transformed to make sense to others whose work is also informing specific courses of action, and how experience arrives at shaping what becomes 'comparative analysis'.  Bringing a Practice lens to the understanding of comparative analysis helps explain how multiple, conflicting, parallel or embedded frames can generate forms of knowing.

 Reference

Adcock, R. (2008). The Curious Career of "the Comparative Method" (Part 1). Paper presented at the Interpretive Policy Analysis Conference, Essex: Democracy, Governance and Methods.