97

The social sciences, particularly history, have failed to consistently pay attention to the mechanisms of globalization, even as these allow us to pose questions about the methodology and epistemology at the core of these disciplines, such as that of comparativism. Beginning with a critical discussion of two books – Marcel Detienne’s Comparing the Incomparable and Jack Goody’s The East in the West – we will return to the very notion of comparativism and the misunderstandings to which it gives rise. Indeed, it gives rise to questions that touch on problems of interdisciplinarity but also on problems of how to define the entities concerned (cultures, civilizations…). We will attempt to show how a concrete but modest practice of comparativism is a very important issue for the contemporary social sciences and that this practice commits the historian to a reflexive approach with respect to the Western dimension of historical knowledge, which presents a scientific but also a political exit from the alternatives of positivism and relativism.