Give the drawbacks of comparative method.

Drawbacks of Comparative Method :

1. A major methodological problem is whether or not the traits (or units) of comparision and the indicators selected to compare differences or similarities are genuinely comparable and can legitimately be used outside their particular cultural settings.

2. The features under examination may occur within the same society, for instance rates of mobility between different castes and calsses belonging to the same society may be mutually compared, or the same variables may appear in differnt societies like the rates of social mobility among the same strata but in different societies.

3. Radcliffe Brown observed that the comparative method alone gives you nothing. Nothing will grow out of the ground unless you put seeds into it.

4. The comparative method is one way of testing hypotheses. The difficulties while using the comparative method seems to be in part due to the absence of hypotheses, or due to not clearly formulated hypotheses, at the outset, and in part to the problem of defining the unit of comparison.

For example : Compte’s use of the comparative method to establish has ‘law of three stages’ is based not upon a scientific hypothesis but upon a philosophical view of the development of humanity as a whole.

5. Emile Durkheim considered the comparative method as the counterpart in the scoial sciences of the experimental mehtod pursued in the other sciences. He urged that social facts could only be observed, not artificially produced under experimental conditions. So Durkheim favoured the comparative historical apprach because sociologists could not carry out experiments and had to rely on the method of indirect experiment-the comparision of similar cases in a systematic manner.