Human Relations

Area Files
Cultural information for education and research

The Return of the Comparative Method in

Anthropology

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Where Have All the Comparisons Gone?, a recently published series from the
Society for Cultural Anthropology, revisits a longstanding topic in the social
sciences: the debate over the value of comparative cultural studies. In this
series, four distinguished anthropologists have contributed their reflections on
the topic. Robert Borofsky initiates the discussion by providing readers with an
overview of the intellectual history of comparative anthropology, a history that
is relevant both for the academic discipline at large, and also for HRAF, a
longstanding pillar in cross-cultural research in anthropology: 

As anthropology became a more formalized field in the late

nineteenth century, it also became more sophisticated in its
comparisons—classifying different societies into evolutionary schema.
In the influential The Golden Bough, James Frazer (1890, 1900,
1906–15) described religious beliefs among a range of societies.
These accounts suggested to Frazer an evolution of human thought
from magic through religion to science. In Ancient Society, Henry
Lewis Morgan (1877) similarly perceived an evolutionary connection
 between the Iroquois and Aztec Confederacies, the Athenian Phratry
and the Scottish Clan […] But Franz Boas would have none of these
broad, speculative evolutionary comparisons. In “The Limitations of
the Comparative Method in Anthropology”, he sought to drive a stake
through them (Borofsky 2019).

According to Borofsky, the shift away from comparative studies makes

anthropology a less relevant discipline outside the walls of the ivory tower.
People are interested in comparisons: What makes one culture similar to
another culture? What makes them different? These are questions that people
are interested in outside of anthropology. Cross-cultural data analysis can help
to answer these questions. Borofsky argues that in cultural anthropology, as in
academia at large, there is an overemphasis on the quantity of publications
produced rather than the quality: “more publications do not necessarily
produce more knowledge. Rather, they often produce unsubstantiated
assertions of uncertain, ambiguous value” (Borofsky 2019).

In our age of globalization, cross-cultural understanding is more important

than ever before. As Borofsky points out, comparisons “do not necessarily prove
a point. But they help to make sense of data about a group by broadening the !
frame of analysis. They offer the opportunity for new insights and syntheses”
(Borofsky 2019). This point is in alignment with the objectives of HRAF’s open "
access resource, Explaining Human Culture, which includes findings from over
1,000 cross-cultural studies as well as “topical summaries of what we have
learned from cross-cultural research, or more precisely, what we think we
know, and to point out some of the things we do not yet know” (Ember 2016).
According to Borofsky:

Without comparative studies that draw ethnographic data from various groups
together, that allow both those inside and outside the field to see broader
patterns, anthropology remains a fragmented body of assertions with
uncertain, ambiguous value. Anthropologists want to move beyond the
problematic broad conjectures of earlier times. They prefer more precise, more
historical, and/or more scientific analyses. But without comparisons to broaden
this perspective, to help synthesize the data, there are no broader frameworks
that make sense of their assertions that demonstrate anthropology’s
intellectual importance. All we have is a deluge of specialized studies of
uncertain significance (Borofsky 2019). 

HRAF recognizes that the intellectual importance of anthropology is the

potential to make substantive contributions to fostering cross-cultural
understanding in the age of globalization. Our mission is to promote
understanding of cultural diversity and commonality in the past and present.
Many of the key points made in “Where Have All the Comparisons Gone?” are
echoed by our open access resource, Explaining Human Culture:

The vast anthropological record of human societies and cultures

allows us to ask cross-cultural questions about human universals and
differences. What cultural and societal features are universal? What
features vary? And how can we explain these patterns? These are the
fundamental questions asked by cross-cultural researchers (Ember
2016).

The Great Divide: Early Evolutionism vs. Historical

Particularism

The intellectual debate over comparative methodologies goes back to a

twentieth century split in anthropological theory between two divergent
perspectives: evolutionism and historical particularism. The important place of
HRAF’s founding at this epicenter is described in the publication Human !
Relations Area Files: 1949-1969 A Twenty-Year Report and also in the obituary
for HRAF’s intellectual founder George Peter Murdock (1897-1985) which was
written by his former advisee John W. M. Whiting (1990). A subsequent article
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“The HRAF as Radical Text?”, written by Joseph Tobin (1986) for Cultural
Anthropology, continues to evaluate the role of HRAF in this discussion.

Lewis Henry Morgan E. B. Tylor William Graham

Herbert Spencer Sumner

The evolutionary tradition in anthropology emerged within nineteenth century

social theory regarding the evolution of societies and cultures. Posited stages
of evolution were developed by anthropologists from England (Edward Burnett
Tylor) and the United States (Lewis Henry Morgan) to explain human cultural
evolution. English philosopher Herbert Spencer read Charles Darwin’s On the
Origin of Species (1859) and extended the idea of natural selection in an
attempt to explain the evolution of cultural complexity.
By the late nineteenth century, the evolutionary tradition had reached Yale
University, where William Graham Sumner taught courses using Herbert
Spencer’s Study of Sociology (1873) as a textbook. Sumner was a mentor to
Albert Galloway Keller, who inspired Murdock to study anthropology at Yale.

Murdock began teaching anthropology at Yale in 1928 and served as chairman

of the anthropology department from 1938 to 1960. Murdock’s Cross-Cultural
Survey which was considered “an outgrowth of Sumner’s approach” was
established at the Institute of Human Relations at Yale University (Ford 1970:
4). Murdock later “became convinced that the cross-cultural files would be
more useful if copies were distributed among universities in addition to Yale”
(Whiting 1986: 684) and at an organizational meeting of university
representatives and granting agencies, it was decided to form a cooperative
organization that would produce and distribute such information, to be known
as the Human Relations Area Files. HRAF was officially founded in 1949. Yale
University, along with  Harvard University, the University of North Carolina, the
University of Oklahoma, University of Pennsylvania, the University of Southern
California,  and the University of Washington, became the first sponsoring
members of HRAF to hold paper copies of “the Files” (Ford 1970: 10-11).

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As mentioned previously by Borofsky, the theoretical opposition to evolutionary

approaches in anthropology has its roots in the historical particularism of
Franz Boas at Columbia University and his followers. Boas was a lifelong
opponent of nineteenth century theories of cultural evolution – such as those
of Tylor, Morgan, and Spencer – and he was a strong critic of the comparative
approach. In his essay on “The Limitations of the Comparative Method
Anthropology” (1896), Boas set “a tone for what would become a tradition of
comparative-anthropology bashing” (Tobin 1990: 477).
According to Tobin, “Boas wrote derisively of the comparativists of comparing
essentially dissimilar pieces of disparate cultures and in so missing the real
story, an appreciation of each culture’s unique history” (Tobin 1990: 477). Boas
explained historical particularism as follows:

The customs and beliefs themselves are not the ultimate objects of
research. We desire to learn the reasons why such customs and beliefs
exist — in other words, we wish to discover the history of their
development … The comparative method, notwithstanding all that
has been written in its praise, has been remarkably barren of
definitive results (Tobin 1990: 477).

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Franz Boas Ruth Benedict James Frazer
G. P. Murdock
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Following in the Boasian tradition, the idea of focusing on cultural traits rather
than whole cultures became the subject of ridicule for subsequent critiques.
Ruth Benedict introduced a Frankenstein analogy in her critique of The Golden
Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion (1890) by James George Frazer:

Studies of culture like The Golden Bough and the usual comparative
ethnological volumes are analytical discussions of traits and ignore
all the aspects of cultural integration. Mating or death practices are
illustrated by bits of behavior selected indiscriminately from the most
different cultures, and the discussion builds up a kind of mechanical
Frankenstein’s monster with a right eye from Fiji, a left from Europe,
leg from Tierra del Fuego, and one from Tahiti, and all the fingers and
toes from different regions. Such a figure corresponds to no reality in
the past or present (Benedict 1934: 49).

Comparative Anthropology: Making a Comeback

Using our Explaining Human Culture database as a sample of cross-cultural
studies, we have computed the number of cross-cultural publications (using 10
or more “anthropological cultures”) across time. As shown in the figure below,
the number of publications began climbing after 1954 and peaked in the
1970s. Consistent with HRAF membership trends, there was a pronounced
decline beginning in the late 1970s to early 1980s which coincided with the
rise of “post-modernism” in anthropology. However, the trend is now turning
upward, and the number of cross-cultural studies is almost back up to the peak
levels.

A bar graph of the number of cross-cultural publications in the Explaining Human "
Culture database (shown in 5-year intervals based on the year of publication). Source:
HRAF

Borofsky further indicates that comparison has really never gone away. While
cultural anthropology during the first part of the twentieth century focused
mostly on the historical method of Boas, some of his own students still
emphasized comparison:

Thirty-two years after Boas’ critique, Margaret Mead’s Coming of Age

in Samoa (1928) became an anthropological classic with the broader
public. It involves a comparison of Samoan and American
adolescence. Ruth Benedict’s Patterns of Culture (1934) was another
widely read book and was in fact translated into fourteen languages.
She compares the Pueblo, Dobu, and Kwakiutl in respect to certain
personality patterns (Borofsky 2019).

Additionally, the latter half of the twentieth century saw a resurgence in the
popularity of comparative studies. There is clearly an upward trajectory of
comparative anthropology in the twenty-first century.

Somewhat ironically, Benedict’s criticism of the comparative method in

anthropology – that it is fragmentary in its details – can be levied at other
anthropological studies which are too narrowly focused on just one culture to
the exclusion of comparing that culture to other cultures. Without points of
comparison, cultural analysis becomes little more than observation and
interpretation.  There is little to measure, little to quantify. The social sciences
draw their strength when they are able to compare data and make statistical
comparisons. Without this power, the social sciences have little claim to being
“sciences” at all. Borofsky understands this fully:

What is needed is a return to comparison, to syntheses of data that

move beyond the latest fad, syntheses that enhance our
understanding of various groups—and not a myriad of fragmentary
details, cleverly framed, regarding a particular group…Isn’t
comparison what anthropology is all about? (Borofsky 2019).

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HRAF at the Forefront of Comparative Anthropology
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HRAF has long played a major role in facilitating and promoting cross-cultural
research. As Joseph Tobin points out, HRAF can rightfully be seen as radically
“ahead of its time”:

The HRAF is also radical in being a model of dispersed authority, a

proto-type of ethnographic polyvocality. The HRAF is a compendium
of voices, voices of millions of informants and thousands of
ethnographers…the HRAF replaces the authority of the idiosyncratic,
interpretive lone ethnographer with the dispersed, anonymous
authority of categorization, correlation, and comparison (Tobin 1990:
481).

Introducing Cross-Cultural Research,

an online course from HRAF, provides
a brief introduction to the world of
ethnography-based cross-cultural
research. The course outlines the
logic of cross-cultural research and
various aspects of the research
process from start to finish, including
the steps involved in framing a
research question, deriving
hypotheses from theory, design of
measures, coding procedures,
sampling, reliability, and the use of statistics to analyze results. The course
materials illustrate the rationale behind cross-cultural research and the
importance of comparison:

From the 1900s and into the present, anthropologists have spent
considerable time living with and learning about the culture and
social life of people all over the world. This enormous collection of
descriptive information is critical to understanding different ways of
life. However, cross-cultural researchers want to go beyond mere
description of particular societies and cultures. We want to
understand how and why societies and cultures differ or are similar to
each other. To arrive at this kind of understanding, comparison is
essential (Ember 2016).

As shown in the course, the expression “apples and oranges” provides an "
especially valuable analogy. Apples and oranges are clearly very different –
you might bake an apple pie, but you probably would not make an orange pie.
However, apples and oranges have similarities as well – both are fruit, both are
round, both contain fructose, and both grow on trees. The very reason that we
have the colloquialism “apples and oranges” is the starting point for
comparison:

Comparisons help us identify both similarities and differences. And

even when we describe uniqueness, we are implicitly saying that
something differs from all other cases we know about. Even
uniqueness employs comparison. We can focus on uniqueness of a
culture if we choose, but we can also focus on similarities or
differences. Comparison and uniqueness are not incomparable; they
are just different ways of looking (Ember 2016).

As our two main databases eHRAF World Cultures and eHRAF Archaeology
continue to expand with new anthropologist curated content added regularly,
HRAF continues to be a leader for comparative anthropology and the go to
place for cross-cultural research. For more information about membership,
please contact us.

References

Benedict, Ruth. 1934. Patterns of Culture. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin.

Borofsky, Robert. 2019. Where Have the Comparisons Gone? Society for Cultural
Anthropology.

Boas, Franz. 1940. [1896]. The Limitations of the Comparative Method of

Anthropology. In Race Language, and Culture. Pp. 270-280. New York:
Macmillan.

Darwin, C. R. 1859. On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the

preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. London: John Murray.

Ember, Carol R. 2016. Explaining Human Culture. New Haven: Human Relations !
Area Files.

Ember, Carol R. 2016. Introducing Cross Cultural Research. New Haven: Human
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Relations Area Files.

Ford, C. S. 1970. Human Relations Area Files: 1949-1969 A Twenty-Year Report.

Behavior Science Notes, 5(1), 1–61. https://doi.org/10.1177
/106939717000500101

Frazer, J. G. 1890. The Golden bough, a study in comparative religion. London:

Macmillan.

Spencer, H. 1873. The Study of Sociology London: Henry S. King

Tobin, Joseph. 1990. The HRAF as Radical Text? Cultural Anthropology.

November 1990. pp. 473-487.

Whiting, John W. M. George Peter Murdock (1897-1985) American

Anthropologist. September 1986. pp. 682-686.

Posted by: Matthew Longcore // Feature // Anthropology, Benedict, Boas, EHC, Frazer, HRAF,
Human Relations Area Files, Introduction to Cross Cultural Research, Mead, Morgan, Murdock,
Spencer, comparative anthropology, comparative method, comparison, culture, eHRAF,
evolutionary anthropology, evolutionism, explaining human culture, historical particularlism,
history // October 14, 2019 [https://hraf.yale.edu/the-return-of-the-comparative-method-in-
anthropology/]

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