CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORKS IN COMPARATIVE INQUIRY: DIVERGENT OR CONVERGENT?

Abstract

The perennial sociological problem of the incommensurability of concepts becomes acute in the context of comparative research. In theoretical discourse second degree sociological concepts and the first degree societal concepts of the members of societies are both subject to this problem to which the unsatisfactory responses have been either radical relativism and theoretical anarchism, or ethnocentrism and dogmatism. Now actual historical tendencies, the globalisation of society and internationalisation of sociology are providing trans-societal and trans-theoretical concepts. At the same time the naturalistic model of comparative study of independent cases becomes less possible. Research shifts its emphasis from seeking uniformity to seeking uniqueness, and by cross-tabulating the focus and direction of comparative research we can develop a six-fold typology of comparisons: (1) encompassing, (2) universalising, (3) generalising, (4) individualising, (5) specifying, (6) particularising. The new opportunities for individualising comparisons take sociology away from natural science patterns to the logic of interpretation in history and the humanities.

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