Afterword

This paper reviews the papers in the Special Issue on Global Ethnographic Comparison (GEC), developing certain broader implications of the approach as expressed in the studies in the issue. The approach is inclusive and varies based on the procedural strategies used in fieldwork, the sequence of case studies undertaken and the character of the ‘global objects’ being studied and the processes shaping them. While a distinct approach, GEC is likely to have significant internal diversity, mapped across its triangular conceptual space. While attentive to all three points of the triangle – global, ethnographic and comparative – it is likely that different studies will tend a little more closely to one or other of the three ‘sides’ of that triangle – global ethnography, comparative ethnography and global comparison. The paper notes that the studies show various aspects of the global, including the continuing importance of the local and national in shaping social relations, the power of the global in limiting local relations and how the global becomes intertwined in the local. The paper concludes with some brief notes about what the practice of GEC is likely to look like.