Beyond the Case : The Logics and Practices of Comparative Ethnography

Beyond the Case is an edited volume that features internationally known scholars describing how and why they use comparative ethnographic methods in their research. For those new to ethnography, this will aid in selecting and applying an approach that maps on to their research goals. For those already committed to an existing approach or tradition, engagement with alternatives may provide insights into the strengths, weaknesses, and potential avenues for improving their own work.

The social sciences have seen a substantial increase in comparative and multi-sited ethnographic projects over the last three decades. Yet, at present, researchers seeking to design comparative field projects have few scholarly works detailing how comparison is conducted in divergent ethnographic approaches. In Beyond the Case, Corey M. Abramson and Neil Gong have gathered together several experts in field research to address these issues by showing how practitioners employing contemporary iterations of ethnographic traditions such as phenomenology, grounded theory, positivism, and interpretivism, use comparison in their works. The contributors connect the long history of comparative (and anti-comparative) ethnographic approaches to their contemporary uses. By honing in on how ethnographers render sites, groups, or cases analytically commensurable and comparable, Beyond the Case offers a new lens for examining the assumptions, payoffs, and potential drawbacks of different forms of comparative ethnography.