Comparisons, cultures, contexts.

Abstract

The article by Clemens Tesch-Romer and Hans-Joachim von Kondratowitz is an educated and timely contribution to the discussion on the comparative ageing research. The authors really hit upon the right thing, explicating the rather weak theoretical thinking and analyzing the crucial steps of comparative research. The paper is rich and inspiring, and hopefully invites many colleagues to continue the discussion. My comments will oVer no solutions to the problems posed in the article, rather, my few remarks are likely to add to the complexity of these questions. In this paper, “comparative” refers to comparisons between countries or cultures. Comparisons, however, are a standard method in social science, and there are few empirical studies that do not include comparisons between age groups, genders, rural and urban environments etc. To what extent and how, then, are comparisons between countries or cultures diVerent from these, or is there any fundamental diVerence at all? Researchers in gender studies have criticized the non-reXective use of gender, or sex, as a technical, seemingly neutral category, that neglects the substantial qualitative diVerences between being a man and being a woman. It may not be unfair to say that the same criticism applies also to many comparisons between countries. Tesch-Romer and von Kondratowitz point out that it is often unclear whether the name of the country represents a geographically conWned state with speciWc legal structure, a nation, a society, or a culture. In comparative studies, these choices are almost never explicitly discussed. If “country” is a relevant denominator in studies where common legislative and societal structures are important, such as in studies of health and social services, it may not be as relevant in studies that focus on values or subjective experiences; these may vary according to area or sub-culture group more than from one country to another. The notion of “culture”, then, can refer to practices of thought, interpretations and beliefs in a working place or care unit as well as in a country or in a religious group. Apparently, it should be the nature of the research question and the object of the study that is important when the level of comparisons is decided, and this choice is not always easy. The cultural or linguistic turn in social science, particularly sociology (Hall 1997), has contributed to the understanding of “culture” as something that not only inXuences the thoughts and behaviors of people living in it, but is also continuously modiWed and reconstructed by these people. This line of thinking also draws our attention to the cultural contextuality not only of the phenomena that our concepts describe, but also of these concepts themselves. From this perspective, it would be hard to imagine a “standard of comparison which is valid in all cultures and societies” (Tesch-Romer and von Kondratowitz 2006, p. 164). A radically “cultural” position may lead to a situation where are all cross-cultural comparisons are irrelevant and impossible. In a less-extreme form the challenge of cultural studies invites researchers to reXective thinking and careful consideration on their concepts and basic assumptions. In the paper, the authors present a detailed and useful discussion about diVerent types of equivalency. They describe how the problems of transferring a question from one context to another reach far beyond translating the words in the questionnaire from one language to another. The linguists make a diVerence between denotation, referring to the literal meaning of a word, and connotation, referring to a deeper cultural meaning of the word. These may include dimensions such as the contexts where the M. Jylha (&) University of Tampere, Tampere, Finland e-mail: marja.jylha@uta.W