Relational comparison revisited

Abstract

This article revisits the idea of relational comparison that grew out of my earlier research in post-apartheid South Africa in order to put it to work in new ways. First I clarify distinctively different modalities of ‘comparison’ and their political stakes, and go on to specify how the ‘relational’ in relational comparison refers to an open, non-teleological conception of dialectics at the core of Marx’s method. I then engage with sharply polarized urban studies and subaltern studies debates cast in terms of Marxism vs. postcolonialism/poststructuralism and suggest how distinctions among comparative modalities help to reconfigure the terms of the debates. The article lays the groundwork for a larger project that focuses on understanding resurgent nationalisms, populisms, and racisms in different regions of the world in relation to one another in the era of neoliberal forms of capitalism. More broadly I suggest how relational comparison, extended to include conjunctural analysis, can be used as a method for practicing Marxist postcolonial geographies.