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Podcast: Exchanges: A Cambridge UP Podcast
Episode: Erica S. Simmons and Nicholas Rush Smith, "Rethinking Comparison: Innovative Methods for Qualitative Political Inquiry" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
Description: With Rethinking Comparison: Innovative Methods for Qualitative Political Inquiry (Cambridge University Press, 2021) Erica S. Simmons and Nicholas Rush Smith issue a call for qualitative political scientists to go beyond the controlled comparisons so dear to them, and rethink what it is that they compare and why. The call is both earnest and compelling. The book is persuasive not just in its efforts to show that the what and why of comparison ought not be limited to the “Millian paradigm”—even as its editors are at pains to express their appreciation for the paradigm’s logics. Over twelve chapters, an impressive rol...