'Bad comparisons' premised on the assumption of equivalence between two disparate entities have long been the subject of both epistemological and anthropological critique. Yet, as I demonstrate with reference to ethnographic materials form Indonesia's Riau Islands Province, the people with whom anthropologists work sometimes embrace forms of 'bad' comparison that anthropologists would be inclined to denounce, even claiming them to be 'affirming' or 'motivating'. Such a situation reveals that an anthropology of comparisons, and anthropological responses to comparisons, must understand the affective, as well as epistemological, dimensions of comparative practice. In this chapter, I show how personal histories of comparison, shaped by colonial legacies, globalisation, economic inequality, and kinship structure, have profound implications for the affective consequences of specific comparative acts. Such an argument not only explains why 'bad comparisons' might routinely be made – indeed, might prove vital – but also presents a challenge to the universalising and evolutionary assumptions evident in the field of 'social comparison theory'. I argue that comparison and its affects are better analysed through the psychoanalytically inspired frameworks that have been central to the tradition of person-centred ethnography and reflect on the implications of such insights for narrative strategy within anthropology itself at the dawn of what some have dubbed the discipline's 'new comparativism'.
This chapter takes up the volume's overall project of developing a dynamic and processual theorization of ownership and appropriation by analysing the experiences of Indonesian schoolchildren who dreamed of representing their province in a national debating tournament. In doing so, they actively competed to be appropriated as figureheads that would be emblematic of both the aspirations and the achievement potential of their home region: the newly formed province of Kepri, 1 which encompasses approximately 3,200 islands in the waters between Sumatra and Borneo, just to the south of Singapore. Although it had been fervently wished for, it rapidly transpired that the appropriation was transacted in bad faith by both the children and their province. This leads me to argue for the crucial role of human subjectivity in determining both the dynamics and the trajectory of the appropriative relationship. Such a recognition not only enhances our understanding of this specific case, but also carries broader significance for any anthropological study of the appropriation of people.
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