problems to think through comparison

I have stoped the overloading of notes on the blogg for a while and turned back into my paper notebooks. But i needed to come back and think to some topics that have came out in the readings, i guess every medium has it own mode of thinking and i got somehow used to this. I have been trying to catch up with two big areas I was interestingly asked to take a looka at urban indigenous and movements towards the city and take some comparative perspective on this.

A first thing i realized is that i haven't yet acquired the "imperial" habit of anthropology in the north of distancing form our region and compare it to others. I discover that is an interesting practice but I have never done nor i am sure exactly how to do. At the most i a used to compare the tobas with other chaquenian group It has some interesting and a somehow probleatic implications of overgeneralyzing or being superficial in the comparison. But I guess that rely in other people's work make it possible, The problems I see with the practice in general is establishing an agenda of topics to be applyed over different contexts. but I write thi and realize that is te problem of case study in general hen and of corse we are not going to impose nor are we going to neutraly let the case speak for itself. We have discussed this a lot already and is in a way not very usefull to keep on discussing it, at laast in those ways.

Then what is comparison based in? Undeniable Interconnections? The fact of Global relations including colonization? The export of capitalism, natioalism and progress? General repertoires of "discourses and practices"? In my case i guess the comparison inevitably lies in the effects of colonization and "while here this hapened there soemthing different was assambled" type of reasoning. I cold point to national formations and its alterities, subalterns in a cmparative "clave". I still i find this generalizations hard too see in teh readings adn difficult to infer. I will have to find a way in my proposal so inevitably when i have that paragraph added i guess i will have acquiered a new accademic habit taking me towards an "international anthropology" rather than my local intellectual model (of a lot of "universal" theory reading and its "application" to "national" problematics, of course with the strong mediation of generations of my teachers studying abroad to return adn bring the discussion and habits back). I am still skeptical about the problematic detachment in the "north" that even makes people ask in a very honest way "how to get involved", "how to contribute to the other", -and i am still thinking how to think about solidarity groups that even in the really interesting connections put "change" at some distance (emxico, but now also tibet are starnge case), anyway making a total critique would be probably problematic too. In any case is a strong contrast to "how are we getting out of this" and "how to deal with tis eergency" "what shall we do with this new front" type of questions i have at "home". So maybe I am makig it too complicated but i feel there are implications in what tpe of contrast i am creating and what commonality i am establishing. One of the dialogues that inform my doubt is once i proposed some "indigenous activists friends if we could generate an encounter with people form other group and the strong answer was "what for?" to which they added "we are in too very different political moments, to get together, even some exchange can be done of course we still have to work at one level and then go to the otehr". It also took a team to make an indeapth comparative approach in indigenous policies. However i of course see the need for a comparative perspective implying a broader perspective of similar types of connections happening in different contexts or forms of power formation that transcend the nation without having to call them "global".
Well i will be reading on "scale" (marston and the debate in georgraphy, which i just saw was a recent savage mind comment) and cosmopolitism (mignolo) soon.
En la foto Flor con su pavo de navidad perpetuando encenianzas de Doña Petrona de Gandolfo.