https://at-ceu.studyguide.timeedit.net/modules/SOCL6010?type=CORE'Thinking without comparison is unthinkable.' Yet the comparative method has become something distinctive, and comparative history, politics, government, literature as well as comparative-historical sociology have been institutionalized as separate fields. The course explores these explicit comparative strategies in the social sciences and the humanities. It, however, goes beyond that and handles comparison as a cultural system. The course scrutinizes the cultural embeddedness of the logic and categories of comparison, the location of 'general' social theory as well as issues pertaining to hegemony, ideology, knowledge and its division into disciplines. How do we think with disciplines? How do disciplinary habitus ground practices of comparison and in general, the business of research?Globalization has produced an awareness of intertwined histories and social conditions, and a new configuration of similarity and difference, which challenge social research and comparative thinking. This will receive special attention in class. Readings are of two types: (1) texts on comparative strategies and (2) examples of comparative research. The purpose of the class is to enhance your critical skills and help you develop a constructive, theoretically and practically viable approach to your dissertation research.