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Comparison and Beyond Author(s): Jrgen Kocka Reviewed work(s): Source: History and Theory, Vol. 42, No. 1 (Feb., 2003), pp. 39-44 Published by: Blackwell Publishing for Wesleyan University Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3590801 . Accessed: 19/12/2011 04:04
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andTheory 42 (February 2003),39-44 History

2003ISSN:0018-2656 University ? Wesleyan

COMPARISON AND BEYOND

JURGEN KOCKA

ABSTRACT

The meritsof the comparative to historyareundeniable. Comparison helpsto approach andto clarifyprofilesof single cases. It is indispensable for causal identifyquestions, of historical andtheircriticism. Comparison helps to makethe "climate" explanations in a minority. historians remain research less provincial. Still, comparative Manycherandcontiishedprinciples of thehistorical context, discipline -proximity to thesources, in tensionwith the comparative new More recently, nuity-are sometimes approach. transnational histoire histories, croisie--challenge comparative approaches--entangled
and histoire croise'ecan be historiansin a new and interestingway. But histoire comparede

andneedeachother. compatible This comment1first underlinesthe great importanceof comparisonfor gaining historical insight by discussing majorfunctionscomparativeapproachesfulfill in historical studies. It then tries to answerthe question why, nevertheless,comparison has usually been a minority phenomenon among historians. Third, it will draw attentionto a relatively new challenge thatcomparativehistory faces today, and that may well lead to putting comparisoninto a new context. A few conclusions are offered at the end. For the purposes of this comment I want to stress that comparing in history means to discuss two or more historical phenomena systematicallywith respect to their similaritiesand differences in orderto reach certain intellectualaims.2 Which aims? What are, methodologically speaking, the purposes and functions of comparisonin historical researchand presentation?I propose to distinpurposes. guish among heuristic,descriptive,analytical,and paradigmatic
1. Presentedto the panel "Problemsof ComparativeExplanation"at the FourthEuropeanSocial Science History Conferencein The Hague, March2, 2002. 2. For other aspects and surveys of the literaturecf. Jiirgen Kocka, "The Uses of Comparative History," in Societies Made up of History: Essays in Historiography, Intellectual History, ed. RagnarBjork and Karl Professionalisation, Historical Social Theory,& Proto-Industrialisation, Molin (Edsbruk,Sweden:Akademitryck Ansdtzeund AB, 1996), 197-209; Geschichteund Vergleich: ed. Heinz-Gerhard Ergebnisse internationalvergleichenderGeschichtsschreibung, Haupt and Jtirgen in Enciclopedia Kocka (Frankfurt and New York:Campus, 1996); JtirgenKocka, "Storiacomparata," delle scienze sociali (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia italiana, 1998), vol. 8, S. 389-396; HeinzGerhardHaupt, "Comparative History,"in InternationalEncyclopediaof the Social and Behavioral Sciences (Amsterdamand New York:Elsevier, 2001), vol. 4, 2397-2403; HartmutKaelble, Der hisand New York:Campus torische Vergleich:Eine Einfiihrungzum 19. und 20. Jahrhundert(Frankfurt Verlag, 1999).

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Heuristically,the comparativeapproachallows one to identify questions and problemsthatone might miss, neglect, or just not inventotherwise.For this Marc Bloch gave an example from his own research.As an agrarianhistorianhe had studiedthe English enclosures of the sixteenth to the nineteenthcenturies.From that he developed the assumptionthat something analogous should have taken place in France,albeityet undiscoveredby local research.Startingwith this quesProvence tion Bloch revealed for fifteenth-, sixteenth- and seventeenth-century in the structure of and not identical changes corresponding though landownership in this way contributed to a far-reaching revision of the historyof the region.3This was an act of intellectual transfer, based on assumptions about similarities between Englandand France,a productiveinsight madepossible by comparison. Descriptively,historicalcomparisonhelps to clarify the profilesof single cases, frequentlyjust of one single case, by contrastingthem (or it) with others. Many of historicalphenomexamples come to mind: for example, all characterizations ena as "first" or "belated"; or claims for particularity, like the notion of a "German and many other examples--from a Sonderweg"or "AmericanExceptionalism"; processes in WesternEurope to the idea of typology of regional industrialization a distinctive path of Western modernizationcompared with other parts of the world. Comparisonin this sense is ubiquitous,and even plays a role in historical works that one would not classify as comparativein the full sense of the word. It should be addedthat comparisondoes not only help to supportnotions of particularity,but is also indispensablefor challengingand modifying such notions.4 Analytically, the comparative approach is indispensable for asking and answering causal questions. This point has been made frequently, in methodological detail and with many examples.5Nowadays, global history is a field that offers itself for comparativeapproacheswith causal aims, be it with respect to the rise of science in differentcivilizations over the centuries,with respectto the different paths of economic change and growth, or with respect to other problems.6Max Weberpioneeredthis type of ambitiouscomparison.Sewell and others have stressed that comparison can play the role of an indirect experiment facilitating the "testing of hypotheses."While one may be skeptical about this claim (since the ceteris paribus clause can rarely be fulfilled in historical studies), it is beyond doubt that comparisonis indispensablefor historianswho like to ask causal questionsand providecausal answers.Along the same line it should be stressed that the necessary criticism of given explanations, including the
3. Marc Bloch, "Pourune histoire compar6edes soci6t6s europ6ennes"(1928), in Milanges historiques,ed. Marc Bloch (Paris:Ecole des HautesEtudes en Sciences Sociales, 1983), vol. 1, 16-40. 4. The debate and researchabout the questions of a "GermanSonderweg"can serve as an example. Cf. JiirgenKocka, "AsymmetricalHistoricalComparison:The Case of the GermanSonderweg," History and Theory38 (1999), 40-51. 5. Cf. William H. Sewell, "MarcBloch andthe Logic of Comparative History,"History and Theory 6 (1967), 208-218; A. A. van den Braembussche,"HistoricalExplanationand ComparativeMethod: Towardsa Theory of the History of Society,"History and Theory28 (1989), 2-24. 6. For a recent overview of these debates, see Gale Stokes, "The Fates of Human Societies: A Review of Recent Macrohistories," AmericanHistorical Review 106 (2001), 508-525.

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both of the local and of the generalizing type, rebuttalof "pseudo-explanations" needs comparisonas well.7 functionof comparison.In this respect Finally,just a word on the paradigmatic a to distance oneself bit from the case one knows best, from comparisonhelps is the Germanword. In the light of observable "one's own history."Verfremdung alternatives one's own development loses the self-evidence it may have had before. One discovers the case with which one is most familiaras just one possibility among others. Frequentlyhistorians are relatively concentratedon the history of their country or region. Because of this, comparisoncan have a deprovincializing, a liberating,an eye-opening effect, with consequences for the atmosphereand style of the profession. This is a contributionof comparisonthat even today. should not be underestimated, These points should suffice in orderto remindus of the many advantagescomparisonhas. Why is it neverthelessthe case that comparativehistory has had a minoritystatusfor a very long time. and continuesto have thatstatuseven today? There are many practicalreasons as well as reasons related to the culturaland nationalfunctionsthe disciplinehas had over the centuries.Afterall, as a mass diswith the rise of the nation-state, cipline history emerged in close interconnection at least in the West. I am not dealing with these impedimentsof comparativestudies now. Rather,I want to discuss three seriousmethodologicalreasonsthat make thatconstitutea certaintension between comparisondifficult,threecharacteristics the comparativeapproachand the classical traditionof historyas a discipline. 1. The more cases a comparative study includes, the more dependent it becomes on secondaryliterature,and the more difficult it becomes to get nearto the sourcesand readthem in theiroriginallanguage.But proximityto the sources and command of their language has developed as a major principle of modern historicalscholarshipas it has emerged since the late eighteenthcentury,for very good reasons. 2. The comparativeapproachpresupposesthat the units of comparisoncan be from each other.It is neitherthe continuitybetweentwo phenomenanor separated the mutualinfluencesbetween them thatconstitutethem as cases for comparison. Ratherthey are seen as independent cases thatarebroughttogetheranalyticallyby asking for similaritiesand differencesbetween them. In otherwords,the comparison breakscontinuities,cuts entanglements,and interrupts the flow of narration. But the reconstruction of continuities,the emphasison interdependence as well as narrative forms of presentation, are classical elements of historyas a discipline. 3. One cannot comparetotalities, in the sense of fully developed individualities. Rather,one compares in certainrespects. One has to decide with respect to which viewpoints, questions, or Erkenntnisinteressen one wants to comparetwo or more cases. The more cases one includes, the more importantbecomes this selective decision about the viewpoints, questions, and problemswith respect to which one wants to compare. In other words, comparison implies selection, abstraction,and de-contextualizationto some degree. One realizes this right
7. Again Bloch has given examples. Cf. note 3 above.

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away if one thinks of multi-case comparisons.Whoever tries to compare, let us say, twenty regional industrializationcases or demographic patterns in forty Frenchcities in the middle of the nineteenthcentury,has to isolate the objects of from theircontext to a large degree. But the comparison,the relevant"variables" is dearand centralto emphasis on context, on embeddedness,on Zusammenhang history as a discipline. Again there is a tension between the comparative approachand some of the much cherishedand worthwhile principles of historical studies, at least in the West. These are the major methodological reasons why comparative approaches were traditionallynot in the centerbut at the peripheryof history as a discipline. This also explains why comparativeapproachesbecame much more popularand much more central once history became more social-science oriented in the 1970s and 1980s.8 Most recently the wind that blows into the face of comparativehistorianshas become even stronger.In additionto the moretraditionaland conventionalobjections historiansmay have against too much and too rigorous comparison,there are new ones, new reservationsagainst clear-cut comparativeapproaches,this time on the side of the youngest, in an interesting way. After the end of the East-West conflict around 1990 both the acceleratedprocesses of internationalization and the renewed debates on globalization startedto change the way in which we define historical questions and explore historical problems.As a consequence, thereis a new stress on "entangledhistories,"on "histoirecroisle," on which I find in some tenor "Beziehungsgeschichte" "Verflechtungsgeschichte" sion with basic principlesof comparativehistory.9 There is, fortunately,much interest now in transnational approachesto history. The different currents of global or world history are cases in point. Comparativeapproaches, internationaland interculturalcomparisons, are just commitment.There are otherways one way for realizing this rising transnational as well, for example, studies and interpretations using postcolonial theories.'0 According to this view one is much less interestedin similaritiesand differences between, let us say, Europe and the Arab world, but ratherin the processes of mutual influencing, in reciprocal or asymmetric perceptions, in entangled processes of constitutingone another.In a way, the history of both sides is taken as one instead of being considered as two units for comparison.One speaks of entanglements;is interestedin travelling ideas, migrating people, and transnational commerce;mutuallyholds images of "theother";and one talks aboutmen8. On the basis of a comprehensivesurvey HartmutKaelble identifies the 1980s as, quantitatively seen, the breakthrough phase of comparative social history in Europe. Hartmut Kaelble, Historiker," Forschungeneuropiiischer "Vergleichende Sozialgeschichtedes 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts: in Hauptand Kocka, eds. Geschichteund Vergleich,97. 9. Cf. Johannes Paulmann, "InternationalerVergleich und interkultureller Transfer: Zwei Geschichte des 18. bis 20. Jahrhunderts," Historische Zeitschrift Forschungsansitzezur europiiischen 267 (1998), 649-685; Globalization in WorldHistory, ed. Anthony G. Hopkins (London: Pimlico, 2002). 10. Cf. Robert J. C. Young, Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction(Oxford and Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers,2001).

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and dominance.Cultural tal mapping,including aspects of power, subordination, dimensions are usually centralto such an approach.Europe and non-European partsof the world, the West and non-Westerncivilizations are the most preferred topics for such approaches."Entangledhistories"has become a key phrase, for instanceadvocatedby the sociologist-ethnologistShalini Randeria. Anothervariation of this type of approachhas been called "histoirecroisele,"such as a histoire croisee between Germanyand France in the nineteenth century as propagated by Michael Werner,BdnddicteZimmermann,and SandrineKott." These are highly interesting and promising developments. But this type of transnationalapproach goes beyond comparison. Or does it fall back behind comparison?At any rate, from an entangled-historypoint of view, comparison appearsa bit too mechanistic,a bit too analyticalin that it separatesreality into differentpieces in orderto analyze,that is, to comparethe pieces as units of comparison,whereas it would be necessary to see them as one, as one web of entanglements, one "Zusammenhang"of Verflechtungenand relations. In fact, EspagneandWerner,who came from the study of literatureandculture,and who have pioneered this approach with respect to developments in Germany and In the France, very early and effectively criticized the comparativeapproach.12 meantimethey have many sympathizers,particularlyamong culturalhistorians. Certainly,neitherthe built-instrengthsof the historicalmethod nor the recent interestin transcultural and transnational entanglementsshould be taken as justifications for withdrawingfrom comparativehistory. Proximity to the sources and control of languages are importantimperativesof historical research. But they must not be taken as excuses for professional over-specialization, nor should they prevent the broad perspectives and comprehensive interpretations historiansmust be able to offer in this global age. The stress on continuity and context are indispensable for and characteristicof historians'work. But on the other hand continuity is just one guiding principle of historical reconstruction among others, and while historianshave to take context seriously,their intellectual operationsare always selective, viewpoint-relatedand, in this sense, analytical; they never reconstruct totalities in full. Consequently, comparative approachesonly emphasize and make particularlymanifest what is implicit in any kind of historical work: a strong selective and constructive component. Comparativehistory compels its practitionersto explicitly reflect upon these
11. Sanjay Subrahmanyam,"Connected Histories: Notes towards a Reconfigurationof Early ModernEurasia," ModernAsian Studies 31 (1997), 735-762; Shalini Randeria,"GeteilteGeschichte ed. Jmrn und verwobene Moderne," in Zukunftsentwiirfe: Ideen fiir eine Kultur der Verdinderung, et al. (Frankfurt: ROisen Campus, 1999), 87-96; Le travail et la nation: Histoire croisde de la France et al. (Paris:Maison des sciences de l'homme, 1999); et de l'Allemagne,ed. BdnddicteZimmermann Jtirgen Osterhammel, "TransnationaleGesellschaftsgeschichte: Erweiterung oder Alternative?," Geschichte und Gesellschaft 27 (2001), 464-479; Sebastian Conrad, "Doppelte Marginalisierung: Plidoyer flir eine transnationale Perspektive auf die deutsche Geschichte," Geschichte und Gesellschaft 28 (2002), 145-169; Emma Rothschild, "Globalizationand the Return of History," Foreign Policy (Summer 1999), 106-116. les relations interculturelles 12. Transferts: dans l'espacefranco-allemand (XVIIIeet XIXesiecle), ed. Michel Espagne and Michael Werner(Paris:Editions Recherche sur les civilisations, 1988).

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epistemological premises of their work, while these premises are frequentlyjust entanglementsis implicit in other approaches.The new interest in transnational most welcome and promising. However, it must not lead away from but should incorporaterigorous comparison, which remains particularlyindispensable for historical studies with global reach if they do not want to become merely speculative or feuilletonistic. But comparativehistoriansshould react to the old caveats and the new challenges in a productiveway. Usually they will limit the numberof cases they compare in orderto take contexts sufficiently into consideration.More importantly, they can and should incorporateelements of the "entangledhistories"approach into the comparativedesign of their research. Certainly,the act of comparison presupposesthe analyticalseparationof the cases to be compared.But that does between these cases (if and to not mean ignoring or neglecting the interrelations should become partof the the extent thatthey existed). Rather,such interrelations as that have led to similarities them factors framework by analyzing comparative or differences,convergence or divergence between the cases one compares. classical comparThis has been done before. TakeAlexander Gerschenkron's as an example. He, in a way, took European ison of Europeanindustrializations as a whole. At the same time, he comparedits partsor segments, industrialization that is, industrializationprocesses within different countries. He gave much between them, for example, to the export and import weight to the interrelations of capital,labor,methods, and ideas as well as to processes of perception,imitation, transfer,and rejection between the industrializersin different European countries.And he showed that some of these interrelationscontributedto more similaritywhile others led to importantdifferences between nationalpatternsof in Europe.13 industrialization PhilippTher investigates the origins, programmes, and public support of opera houses in nineteenth-centuryEast organizations, CentralEuropeand Germany.While analyzing their differences and similarities, he also shows how they perceived and influencedone another--all of them elements of a comprehensivecultureof CentralEurope.14 Many other examples could be given in orderto show that it is both possible and desirable to treat historical phenomena as units of comparison and, at the same time, as componentsof a largerwhole. Comparative history andthe "entangled histories"approachare differentmodes of historical reconstruction.There is a tension between them, but they are not incompatible.One can try to analyze in comparativeterms and tell a story, nevertheless.It is not necessary to choose between histoire compare'eand histoire croisde. The aim is to combine them. Friedrich-Meine cke-Institut Berlin
13. A. Gerschenkron,Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of HarvardUniversity Press, 1962), 5-51, 353-364. 14. Philipp Ther, "Geschichteund Nation im MusiktheaterDeutschlandsund Ostmitteleuropas," 50 (2002), 119-140. Zeitschriftfiir Geschichtswissenschaft