Decentering Comparative Analysis in a Globalizing World

Decentering Comparative Analysis in a Globalizing World aims to go beyond the traditional criticism in comparative analysis. It wants to shed new light on the question of comparing as a form of categorizing. In this perspective, three relevant dimensions to question the naturalized categories of comparison are mobilized: ethnocentrism, the nation, and academic disciplines. Based on original empirical work, the volume proposes to use comparative categories by mixing and shifting the analytical perspectives. It brings together contributions that come to terms with the historicity of the comparative method in the social sciences. It eventually deals with the key issue of comparability of various cases, in the enlarged context of a globalizing world.

Contributors are: Anna Amelina, Camille Boullier, Catherine Cavalin, Serge Ebersold, Andreas Eckert, Mouhamedoune Abdoulaye Fall, Isabel Georges, Olivier Giraud, Aïssa Kadri, Wiebke Keim, Michel Lallement, Marie Mercat-Bruns, Luis Felipe Murillo, Kiran Klaus Patel, Léa Renard, Ferruccio Ricciardi, Paul-André Rosental, Pablo Salazar-Jaramillo, Stéphanie Tawa-Lama, Nikola Tietze, Tania Toffanin, Michel Vincent and Bénédicte Zimmermann.

Olivier Giraud is research director at the CNRS (Lise-CNRS, Paris, France). He is a specialist in comparative policy analysis: employment and training policies, long-term care policies, gender equality policies. He recently co-edited the volume Categories in Context – Gender and Work in France and Germany, 1900–Present (Berghahn Books, 2019) with Isabelle Berrebi-Hoffmann, Léa Renard and Theresa Wobbe.

Michel Lallement is Professor of Sociology at the Conservatoire national des arts et métiers, Paris, France. His research affiliations are with the Lise-CNRS. He has written articles and books on work, employment, industrial relations and international comparisons, and the history of sociology, including Un désir d’égalité. Vivre et travailler dans des communautés utopiques (Seuil, 2019).