Download Approaches to Comparative History

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Department of History
University of British Columbia
HIST 597C – The Spectre of Difference
Section 201, Winter 2011-12, 2nd term
Timothy Brook / Buchanan 1117 / 604-822-5192 / [email protected]
Office hours: Tues 2-3, Thurs 11-12
This course explores comparison as a historical method. Although comparative history
has not always found favour in the academy, historians always implicitly compare. We
will review the intellectual foundations of the comparative approach, consider how comparison has been done, and investigate the assumptions that make it possible. We will
meet weekly for the first ten weeks to discuss issues of historical comparison, at which
point each student is invited to work on a research paper (ideally linked to your thesis),
consulting with the instructor as needed. Those who do not wish to write a research paper
may instead do further readings. You are asked to submit two pieces of written work:
1. a short paper (5-6 pp.), either a prospectus for the research paper, or an analysis
of the uses of comparative method in an influential work in your area of expertise; due
Monday, February 13;
2. either a research paper (18-20 pp.), or an essay that explore a set of problems
that arise when writing a comparative history (12-15 pp.), due Wednesday, April 18.
Seminar Topics
1. Course introduction: comparison as method
January 4
2. Comparison as perspective: Orientalism
January 11
Edward Said in 1978 enunciated what has become the classic critique of the Eurocentric
interpretive position. Bernard Lewis’ attack is just as classic.
Said, Orientalism, pp. 1-123
Lewis, “The Question of Orientalism”
Grafflin, “Orientalism’s Attack on Orientalism”
3. European structures of knowledge of the other
January 18
Mediaeval Christianity supplied European intellectuals with certain assumptions about
their own history, and therefore also the history of others.
Brook and Blue, China and Historical Capitalism, ch. 3
Marshall and Williams, The Great Map of Mankind, ch. 5
van Kley, “Europe’s ‘Discovery’ of China and the Writing of World History”
4. Hegel imagines the world
January 25
As the world came into view, Hegel theorized its essence. After reading the Introduction,
look ahead to a section about which you have some knowledge (the choices are Asia,
Greece, Rome, Germany, and modern Europe) and see what Hegel is saying.
Hegel, The Philosophy of History,1857 ed.: pp. 1-27, 56-111, 456-77; 1956 ed.:
pp. 1-26, 54-115, 438-57
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Lemon, “Hegel’s Philosophy of History”
Guha, History at the Limit of World History, pp. 1-47
5. Weber models the world
February 1
The emergence of the social sciences depended on difference.
Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, pp. 13-78
Collins, Weberian Sociological Theory
6. Capitalism
February 8
Capitalism as a concept has relied heavily on the comparative method, as we have
already seen from Weber. In the 1990s, China moved forward as the chief comparator.
Goody, Capitalism and Modernity, chs. 2-3, 5-6
Brook and Blue, China and Historical Capitalism, ch. 4
Schiel, Despotism and Capitalism
7. The challenge of California School: reciprocal comparison
February 15
European capitalism could no longer be explained by invoking non-capitalism elsewhere.
Wong and Pomeranz argue in favour of pursuing reciprocal comparison.
Wong, China Transformed, pp. 1-151
Pomeranz, The Great Divergence
8. Foucault and the comparative history of the body
February 29
It was the body that presented Foucault with the material from which to start unravelling
established assumptions. for while everyone has a body, but not all cultures inhabit the
body, nor represent it, in the same way. Our joint example is the Chinese body in pain;
bring in others for discussion.
Foucault, TBA
Flynn, “Foucault’s Mapping of History”
Brook, Bourgon, and Blue, Death by a Thousand Cuts, chs. 1, 5-9
9. Other cultures
March 7
Comparison has had to learn to deal with the heterogeneity of cultures in the global
context. We will read Zhang Longxi, but each member is asked to present an instance
from his/her own field that involves making comparisons across cultures.
Zhang, Mighty Opposites, chs. 1, 2, 4, 6
10. Is modernity the end of comparison?
March 14
Lang, “Modern, Postmodern, World”
Sachsenmaier, Reflections on Multiple Modernities: Introduction, chs. 3, 4, 10
Harootunian, Overcome by Modernity, Preface
Woodside, Lost Modernities
11. Presentation of research
April 4
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