Introduction: The Promise, Pitfalls, and Practicalities of Comparative Ethnography

This introductory chapter examines the methodological and practical challenges that comparative ethnographers face. It begins by discussing both the promises and potential pitfalls of comparative field research. It then moves to an examination of how ethnography’s unusually diverse set of traditions provides both unique challenges and possibilities for comparative social science. The chapter proceeds to chart the various ways in which ethnography’s historically diverse traditions translate into divergent approaches to comparison in contemporary research. This is followed by an overview of the structure of the volume, which explains how each of our contributors’ chapters advances comparative ethnographic methodology. The chapter concludes with a discussion of why acknowledging, maintaining, and utilizing ethnographic pluralism, rather than pushing for a single catch-all approach, can benefit both individual scholars and the field of ethnographic methodology more broadly.