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Charles C. Ragin's The Comparative Method proposes a synthetic strategy, based on an application of Boolean algebra, that combines the strengths of both qualitative and quantitative sociology. Elegantly accessible and germane to the work of all the social sciences, and now updated with a new introduction, this book will continue to garner interest, debate, and praise.

Cognition presents evolutionary research with one of its greatest challenges. Cognitive evolution has been explained at the proximate level by shifts in absolute and relative brain volume and at the ultimate level by differences in social and dietary complexity. However, no study has integrated the experimental and phylogenetic approach at the scale required to rigorously test these explanations. Instead, previous research has largely relied on various measures of brain size as proxies for cognitive abilities. We experimentally evaluated these major evolutionary explanations by quantitatively comparing the cognitive performance of 567 individuals representing 36 species on two problem-solving tasks measuring self-control. Phylogenetic analysis revealed that absolute brain volume best predicted performance across species and accounted for considerably more variance than brain volume controlling for body mass. This result corroborates recent advances in evolutionary neurobiology and illustrates the cognitive consequences of cortical reorganization through increases in brain volume. Within primates, dietary breadth but not social group size was a strong predictor of species differences in self-control. Our results implicate robust evolutionary relationships between dietary breadth, absolute brain volume, and self-control. These findings provide a significant first step toward quantifying the primate cognitive phenome and explaining the process of cognitive evolution.

The primary rationale for the use of phylogenetically based statistical methods is that phylogenetic signal, the tendency for related species to resemble each other, is ubiquitous. Whether this assertion is true for a given trait in a given lineage is an empirical question, but general tools for detecting and quantifying phylogenetic signal are inadequately developed. We present new methods for continuous‐valued characters that can be implemented with either phylogenetically independent contrasts or generalized least‐squares models. First, a simple randomization procedure allows one to test the null hypothesis of no pattern of similarity among relatives. The test demonstrates correct Type I error rate at a nominal α= 0.05 and good power (0.8) for simulated datasets with 20 or more species. Second, we derive a descriptive statistic, K, which allows valid comparisons of the amount of phylogenetic signal across traits and trees. Third, we provide two biologically motivated branch‐length transformations, one based on the Ornstein‐Uhlenbeck (OU) model of stabilizing selection, the other based on a new model in which character evolution can accelerate or decelerate (ACDC) in rate (e.g., as may occur during or after an adaptive radiation). Maximum likelihood estimation of the OU (d) and ACDC (g) parameters can serve as tests for phylogenetic signal because an estimate of d or g near zero implies that a phylogeny with little hierarchical structure (a star) offers a good fit to the data. Transformations that improve the fit of a tree to comparative data will increase power to detect phylogenetic signal and may also be preferable for further comparative analyses, such as of correlated character evolution. Application of the methods to data from the literature revealed that, for trees with 20 or more species, 92% of traits exhibited significant phylogenetic signal (randomization test), including behavioral and ecological ones that are thought to be relatively evolutionarily malleable (e.g., highly adaptive) and/or subject to relatively strong environmental (nongenetic) effects or high levels of measurement error. Irrespective of sample size, most traits (but not body size, on average) showed less signal than expected given the topology, branch lengths, and a Brownian motion model of evolution (i.e., K was less than one), which may be attributed to adaptation and/or measurement error in the broad sense (including errors in estimates of phenotypes, branch lengths, and topology). Analysis of variance of log K for all 121 traits (from 35 trees) indicated that behavioral traits exhibit lower signal than body size, morphological, life‐history, or physiological traits. In addition, physiological traits (corrected for body size) showed less signal than did body size itself. For trees with 20 or more species, the estimated OU (25% of traits) and/or ACDC (40%) transformation parameter differed significantly from both zero and unity, indicating that a hierarchical tree with less (or occasionally more) structure than the original better fit the data and so could be preferred for comparative analyses.

Urban studies scholars have engaged in a lively debate on how to reformat comparative methods in the face of critical scrutiny of the discipline’s purported universalism. We share the enthusiasm for a reformatted urban comparativism and, in this paper, we turn to the thorny and more pragmatic question of how to actually carry it out. While traditional comparisons in urban studies have sought to find variation among similar cases by selecting a priori, in this article we propose to compare the findings of different researchers through a posteriori, that is, after the research has been done. We also argue that urban researchers need to focus on urban processes rather than cities; on repeated instances rather than on controlling for difference; and on mid-level abstraction rather than on grand theory or descriptive empirical cases. We put this strategy to work by comparing empirical research previously carried out by the authors on how two Latin American cities became international urban ‘best practices’: Bogotáas a sustainable transport model and Porto Alegre as a model of local participatory budgeting. The comparison highlights the tension between the simplified policy narratives that were mobilised to circulate Bogotáand Porto Alegre as international ‘best practices’ and the broader multi-scalar institutional reforms that these ‘best practice’ narratives have left behind in their global circulations. In doing so, we show the potential of a posteriori comparisons to analyse contemporary global urban dynamics and provide some explicit methodological tactics on how to do comparisons in a more systematic way. 面对针对其学科的所谓普遍主义的批判性审视，城市研究学者就如何将比较方法重新格式化展开了激烈的辩论。我们也对城市研究比较方法的重新格式化充满热情，在这篇论文中，我们转向如何实施这个棘手而更实际的问题。城市研究中的传统比较方法试图通过选择先验来发现相似案例之间的差异，而在本文中，我们建议通过后验（即在研究完成后 ）来比较不同研究人员的发现。我们还认为，城市研究者需要关注各种城市过程，而不是不同的城市；需要关注重复的例子，而不是控制差异；需要关注中关抽象，而不是宏大的理论或描述性的经验案例。我们实施这一策略的方法是比较两位作者之前进行的、关于两个拉丁美洲城市如何成为国际城市“最佳实践”的实证研究：波哥大作为可持续交通模式，阿雷格里港作为地方参与式预算模式。这种比较凸显了简化的政策叙述和更广泛的多层次体制改革之间的紧张关系，前者被用于将波哥大和阿雷格里港作为国际“最佳实践”进行宣传，而后者则被排斥在这种宣传之外。藉此，我们展示了用后验比较来分析当代全球城市动态所具有的潜力，并就如何以更系统的方式进行比较提供了一些明确的方法策略。

\"Is it possible to compare French presidential politics with village leadership in rural India? Most social scientists - even those of opposing methodological and philosophical persuasions - are united in thinking such unlikely juxtapositions are not feasible. We think they are. To explain why and how, The Art of Comparison is a call to arms for interpretivists to embrace creatively comparative work. Initial chapters explain, defend and illustrate the comparative interpretive approach. But it is also an engaging, hands-on guide to doing comparative interpretive research. The chapters cover design, fieldwork, analysis and writing. The advice in each revolves around 'rules of thumb', grounded in experience, and illustrated through stories and examples from our own research in different contexts around the world\"-- Provided by publisher.

An expanded set of sites, a more differentiated set of references and linguistic diversification have been discussed as needed changes in urban studies. The critiques of the limitations of urban studies, in terms of both the scholarship and the scholars, offer important and concrete responses to expanding the scope of the field. Yet this tremendous special issue on ‘Comparative Methods for Global Urban Studies’ with 10 papers cutting across a range of sites and topics is decidedly not only about empirical variation; this is an important distinction worth drawing more attention to. The creativity expressed in these papers comes at an auspicious time in urban studies where new routes for doing urban theory are needed to move past debates about singular versus plural epistemologies of the urban. As a kind of research that demands more translation, exchange and collaboration, perhaps comparative urban research as a mode of theory-building can help to humble the chest-pounding, posturing, privilege of thinking and speaking the language of theory. The theoretical ambitions of these very different papers show how urban theory need not only be about better understanding urbanisation within the epistemological confines of late capitalism. Rather than reifying a shared grammar of urbanisation as a necessity to understand each other, they may entice scholars everywhere to develop a broader vocabulary and perhaps even learn another language. 学者们已经探讨过一组扩展的地点、一组更加差异化的参考和多样化的语言，将其视为城市研究的必要变革。从学术和学者的角度对城市研究局限性的批判，是对扩大该领域范围的呼声的重要而具体的回应。然而，本期关于“全球城市研究的比较方法”的大型特刊（10 篇论文涉及一系列地点和主题）显然不仅仅强调实证方面的多样性；这是一个值得更多关注的重要区别。 这些论文所体现的创造力出现在城市研究欣欣向荣之时，我们需要新的城市理论路线，以超越关于城市单一与多元认识论的辩论。作为一种需要更多翻译、交流和合作的研究，比较城市研究作为一种理论构建模式或许有助于消除那种能以某种思想语言思考和表达的自以为是、居高临下的特权意识。这些截然不同的论文的理论抱负表明，城市理论不需要仅仅局限于在晚期资本主义认识论范围内更好地理解城市化。这些文章没有将城市研究的共同语言奉为我们相互理解的必要条件，并且，它们可能会吸引各地的学者发展更广泛的研究词汇，甚至是学习另一种语言。