Decentering Comparative Analysis in a Globalizing World

Olivier Giraud is research director at the CNRS (Lise-CNRS, Paris, France). He is a specialist in comparative policy analysis: employment and training policies, long-term care policies, gender equality policies. He recently co-edited the volume Categories in Context – Gender and Work in France and Germany, 1900–Present (Berghahn Books, 2019) with Isabelle Berrebi-Hoffmann, Léa Renard and Theresa Wobbe. Michel Lallement is Professor of Sociology at the Conservatoire national des arts et métiers, Paris, France. His research affiliations are with the Lise-CNRS. He has written articles and books on work, employment, industrial relations and international comparisons, and the history of sociology, including Un désir d’égalité. Vivre et travailler dans des communautés utopiques (Seuil, 2019).

1. Introduction: Decentering comparative analysis and beyond

Olivier Giraud, Lise CNRS-Cnam, Paris

Michel Lallement, Lise CNRS-Cnam, Paris



Part 1. Varying the analytical scale



2. Decentering comparison, questioning holism: The multi-sited ethnographic approach

Luis Felipe Murillo, University of Virginia - Charlottesville



3. Close comparison in a global world: Categorizing the quality of work in a multinational company

Bénédicte Zimmermann, EHESS, Paris, Wissenschaftskolleg Berlin

Léa Renard, Freie Universität Berlin



4. Decentering comparative strategies in cross-border studies: Towards a comparative analysis of scale making within assemblages

Anna Amelina, Universität Cottbus



5. Engaging in a dialogue - An experiment in comparative employment Law

Marie Mercat-Bruns, Lise CNRS-Cnam, Paris



6. Which decentered methodological framework is best for comparing inclusive education policies?

Serge Ebersold, Lise CNRS-Cnam, Paris



7. Spectral comparisons: universalization, generalization, and the resource curse

Pablo Jaramillo, Universidad de los Andes – Bogota



Part 2. Comparison: A historical phenomena and the social sciences



8. The rise of comparison and the rise of the New Deal order

Kiran Klaus Patel, Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich



9. Silicosis as a test case for the decentering of medical and labor history

Paul-André Rosental, Science Po, CFR- EHESS, Paris

Catherine Cavalin, Irisso-CNRS-Université Paris Dauphine

Michel Vincent, Minapath Développement



10. Homo Africanus vs homo œconomicus: looking back and forth

Mohamedoune Abdoulaye Fall, LASP-D, Saint-Louis du Sénégal



11. The rise and strength of authoritarian restoration – Constructing a comparative logic for research

Wiebke Keim, Sage-CNRS, Strasbourg



12. Comparing the Social and Spatial Inscription of Women’s Work

Tania Toffanin, Università degli Studi, Padova



13. Categoring difference: labor and the colonial experience

Ferruccio Ricciardi, Lise CNRS-Cnam, Paris



Part 3. Building commensurable universes for comparative analysis: Opportunities and constraints



14. Comparative Research Between France and India: A View from Within

Stéphanie Tawa-Lama Rewal, EHESS, Paris



15. Comparability and conditions of comparability in education. Globalization of education: economist ethnocentrism versus culturalist singularism

Aïssa Kadri, Université Paris 8

16. Comparing imagined transnational communities in France and Germany, or Playing national and European categories – religion, language, territory – at their own game

Nikola Tietze, Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung, Hamburg



17. Communities, organization of work, and institutional mediation: comparing the United States and France

Camille Boullier, Lise CNRS-Cnam, Paris

Michel Lallement, Lise CNRS-Cnam, Paris



18. On the crossroads of territorialities and temporalities: the making of social politics in Brazil

Isabel Georges, IRD-UMR 201 Développement et societies, Paris



19. Entangled politicizations. Democracy against the market in long-term care policies

Olivier Giraud, Lise, CNRS-Cnam, Paris



Concluding remarks

Andreas Eckert, Humbold University Berlin