Best, Worst, and Good Enough: Lessons Learned from Multisited Comparative Ethnography

In this chapter, the authors trace out the “natural history” of an intensely collaborative multisited comparison, which was distinct from many other comparative research projects because research at each site was carried out by a PhD-level anthropologist who was involved in the scientific development of the project rather than only in the implementation of a centrally directed project. It draws on their experiences with this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, a large, US National Institutes of Health-funded multisite project, to discuss ways in which that comparative research could have been even more powerful, things that future comparative research should strive to avoid, recommended best practices, and what the authors would call “minimum adequate” approaches to comparative ethnography.