READING ADVISORY: Lots of big words meant to justify my comparison of two seemingly unrelated fieldsites (and a sharp, sideward elbow-jab aimed at the positivist tendencies that continue to thrive in some anthropology departments). WARNING TO WOULD-BE PLAGIARISTS: Embedded in this excerpt is a curse upon your privates. At first glance the proposed comparison of the case studies presented here appears to violate at least one traditional tenet of comparative studies in general: “that the items compared must share certain fundamental traits” (Nader 1994: 87). Nader (ibid) refers to this as “the notion of controlled comparison,” based upon anthropology’s early conformity to the canons of positivist science that include the identification of and control over discrete variables in stable laboratory settings or, as might be the case with human society, in bounded, static, homogenous communities. The comparative approach of this study has been questioned repeatedly on the following terms: the
(notes from the voices in my head)