ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the history of, and contemporary discussions on, comparison in the study of religion/s. It shows that all prominent early scholars in the emergent discipline or field, in different ways, were committed to comparison. Comparison received a bad reputation with the eclipse of phenomenology of religion that, erroneously, came to be identified with comparison. The chapter looks at different proposals to use or even to rejuvenate comparison and it distinguishes between different forms of comparative set-ups and between main aims and functions of comparative work. Without comparison the formation of analytical and theoretical categories would be inconceivable; comparison is also important for the construction and testing of hypotheses, and for typologies and classification. Comparison is embedded in many standard methods and everyday research activities. This chapter argues that comparison is poorly conceived as a method and is better thought of as a research design. It also encourages readers to pay attention to developments in related disciplines such as anthropology and history.
