The Anthropology of Urban Comparison: Urban Comparative Concepts and Practices, the Entrepreneurial Ethnographic Self and Their Spatializing Dimensions

Abstract

In this article, I discuss comparison in urban anthropology from two perspectives. Using the fundamental epistemological significance of comparison as a starting point for all ethnographic cultural studies, I first present different comparative perspectives in urban anthropology and their concepts. These range from typological thinking to urban specificity and relational urbanity. Secondly, I examine comparison from the perspective of the anthropology of knowledge as an everyday academic practice in order to understand its subjectification and spatial dimensions. The possibilities and limitations of comparison resulting from everyday academic practice are thus seen as a prerequisite for establishing any concept of comparison. Finally, I critically explore the specific requirements of ethnographic comparison via the figure of the entrepreneurial-ethnographic self.

Keywords

• figurational sociology
• cross-cultural comparison
• sociology of space
• spatial analysis
• refiguration of spaces
• urban anthropology