Comparison and the Native

Peter Winch argues that any comparison of social realities across cultures is self-contradictory (The Idea of a Social Science, 108).

We say X is a social fact, that it is what it is only because of the way social actors use and evaluate it. The “natives” deny that X is anything like what other people do. Whatever the superficial resemblances, the others are doing Y not X. If the social scientist says, “Oh, no, you’re wrong,” he has implicitly denied that X is a social fact because he has ignored the very thing that makes X a social fact, the meaning that it has for the doers-of-X.

That’s what they call a clever argument, but Howard Eilberg-Schwartz doesn’t think it works: “when the interpreter asserts the comparability of [say] baptism and pagan sprinkling, he or she does not deny everything that the actor says about the practice.” In fact, the comparison arises precisely because of the meanings that baptizers attribute to the act of baptism: The comparison is attempted because “Christians say baptism removes the taint of original sin and because ‘pagans’ say that sprinkling water removes impurity.” Comparisons don’t “detract from the social character of the events” since they are founded “ultimately on the self-understandings of the actors” (The Savage in Judaism, 96).