"The Value of Comparison"

For more details please contact vdvoffice(at)mmg.mpg.de.

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Friday, April 8

9:30-10:30 Opening remarks and thematic introduction:
Ran Hirschl & Peter van der Veer

Coffee break

10:45-12:30 Panel 1

Michael Herzfeld (Ernest E. Monrad Professor of the Social Sciences, Harvard University): “Comparing Values: Ethics, Audit Culture, and the Menace of Reductionism”

Richard A. Shweder (Harold Higgins Swift Distinguished Service Professor of Comparative Human Development, University of Chicago):
“Moral Maps and the Art of Invidious Comparison”

Lunch

13:30-15:15 Panel 2

Lydia Liu (W.T. Tam Professor in the Humanities, Professor of Chinese and Comparative Literature, Columbia University):
“Translation as a Figure of Thought”

Souleymane Bachir Diagne (Professor of French and Philosophy, Columbia University): “Translation as Comparison”

Coffee break

15:30-17:15 Panel 3

Gauri Viswanathan (Class of 1933 Professor in the Humanities, Columbia University): “Translation, Mediation and Comparison”

Dagmar Schäfer (Director, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin): “Concepts, Values, Machines or Groups: The Language and Matter of Comparison in the Fissiparous Discipline of the History of Science”

19:30 Dinner

Saturday, April 9

9:00-10:45 Panel 4

Sali A. Tagliamonte (Professor of Linguistics, University of Toronto): “Comparative Sociolinguistics: Insights from Change and Dynamics in Language Variation”

Rogers Brubaker (Professor of Sociology, UCLA Foundation Chair, University of California, Los Angeles):
“Cross-Domain Comparisons and the Politics of Difference”

Coffee break

11:00-12:45 Panel 5

Alfred Stepan (Wallace Sayre Professor of Government, Columbia University): “Different Political Questions, Different
Comparative Approaches”

Jürgen Basedow (Director, Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law, Hamburg):
“The Value of Comparison in Law”

13:00-13:30 Working lunch

13:30-14:00 Concluding remarks, publication plans, farewell