Define comparative method.

Comparative Method : 1. The

analyses of social change in hisory are carried out with the help of several methods. One of the most favoured methods is the comparative method used in sociology. This entails the study of different groups and institutions in order to examine similarities and differences.

2. All sociological reaserch involves the comparison of cases or variables, which are similar in some respects and dissimilar in others.

3. A major methodoloical issue (problem) is whether or not the units of comparison (whole societies, major institutions, religions, groups, and so on) and the indicators selected to compare similarities or differences are genuinely comparable and can legitimately be used outside their particular cultural settings.

4. The characteristics under examination can take place within the same society, for instance rates of mobility between different castes and classes belonging to the same society can be mutually compared, or, the same variables may appear in various societies like the rates of social mobility among the same strata but different societies.

5. The comparative method is greatly used in anthropological and ethonological research.

6. George P. Murdock, feeling the necessity for stroing the information, which was continuously building up and the importance of having it at the disposal or social scientists everywhere, opened a Cross cultural Survey at Yale, University.

7. Today, the Human Relations Area File has been developed on the basis of Murdock’s idea and material, and is one of the main ‘databank’ which sociologists possess.

8. Incidentally, in the Victorian age, Herbert Spencer had already started a significant systematic invetory of information about social institution in a large number of countries.

9. Today, all types of data banks are developing different places, making significant factual information, readily and widely available.

10. The systematic use of comparison and contrast as method of enquiry became widely accepted among sociologists and social anthropologists in the first half of the twentieth centuiy.

11. Radcliffe-Brown sought to extend Emile Durkheim’s sociological theory of totemism by comparing and contrasting the relationshp between social structure and religious practices among the Australian Aborigines - who had taterism and the Andaman Islandsers who did not not have it. He also proposed that a relationship could be established through systematic comparative study between ancestor worship and lineage structure.