Practices of Comparing : Towards a New Understanding of a Fundamental Human Practice / Johannes Grave, Walter Erhart, Angelika Epple. - Bielefeld : Bielefeld University Press, [2020] ©2020 - 1 online resource (406 p.)

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Practices of Comparing -- Preliminary Typology of Comparative Utterances -- Incomparability -- Odysseus, Blackbirds, and Rain Barrels -- Where Do Rankings Come From? -- The Weight of Comparing in Medieval England -- The Shifting Grounds of Comparison in the French Renaissance -- Comparison and East-West Encounter -- Japan as the Absolute ‘Other’ -- “Goût de Comparaison” -- Inventing White Beauty and Fighting Black Slavery -- The Politicisation of Comparisons -- Genealogies of Modernism -- Comparing in the Digital Age -- Authors and Editors

Open Access https://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_abf2

Practices of comparing shape how we perceive, organize, and change the world. Supposedly innocent, practices of comparing play a decisive role in forming categories, boundaries, and hierarchies; but they can also give an impetus to question and change such structures. Like almost no other human practice, comparing pervades all social, political, economic, and cultural spheres. This volume outlines the program of a new research agenda that places comparative practices at the center of an interdisciplinary exploration. Its contributions combine case studies with overarching systematic considerations. They show what insights can be gained and which further questions arise when one makes a seemingly trivial practice - comparing - the subject of in-depth research.


Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.


This eBook is made available Open Access under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license:


In English.

9783839451663

10.17302/9783839451663 doi


Bielefeld University Press.
Comparing.
Comparison.
Cultural History.
Digital Humanities.
Historical Change.
Literary Studies.
Literature.
Political Sociology.
Society.
Sociology of Knowledge.
Theory.
HISTORY / Social History.