Comparative Method and New Diversity-oriented Comparativism

The comparative method is at the core of human reasoning and always exists in the observation of the world. For a number of reasons, comparative research has held an extremely significant position in the humanists’ and social scientists’ toolbox. Globalization has been an important factor in increasing the demands and possibilities of cultural exchanges and communication. Information technology has provided an abundance of quantitative data for comparative research, and international communication technology has significantly facilitated the dissemination of information. Comparative research is a multidimensional and comprehensive approach in the context of globalization, cross-culture and trans-civilization. Comparative research as methodology for the humanities and social sciences carries out the comparisons between various areas, countries, cultures and civilizations. From a normative point of view, the comparative method as an instrument can also be utilized for the classification of various social and cultural phenomena. For many sociologists and cultural scholars, the comparative method provides an analytical framework to explore and examine social and cultural differences and specificities. Comparative research can be applied to virtually all fields and disciplines. We may apply many types of comparative studies, such as comparative case studies, comparative studies of cultural traditions, cross-cultural and multicultural comparative studies. Comparative research also comprises many kinds of resources, such as comparison of field investigation, comparison of transnational investigation, comparison of text data, comparison of quantitative data, comparison of conceptual meanings, and so on. The comparative method can be characterized as a diversity-oriented approach. In the field of East-West research, more and more scholars try to establish effective paradigms through the application of new comparativism. We may reveal the main tendency of this new comparativism. As such this paper discusses the following: 1. the historic origins of the comparative method; 2. the definition of the comparative method; 3. the application of the comparative method; 4. the classification of the comparative method; and 5. the transformation from traditional comparativism to new comparativism.