Bridging Anthropology and Global History: Comparative Approaches to the Social-Class/Education Nexus in Nepal

In recent years, the field of comparative education has boldly turned inward, investigating and questioning its own historical and philosophical foundations. By challenging the discipline’s dependence on positivistic, modern modes of comparison, space has emerged for rethinking methodological approaches more broadly. Extending this line of research, this article links modes of comparison from the discipline of anthropology and global history to the interdisciplinary field of comparative education. Drawing on a rereading and writing across the authors’ previous historical and ethnographic research in Nepal, this article explores the social-class/education nexus through a multilayered comparative approach. Accordingly, the article points to the comparative dynamics inherent to sociocultural processes of education in Nepal related to the concept of development (bikas). In doing so, the article argues for a comparative approach operating at different analytical levels—historical, ethnographic, and reflexive—that move beyond the comparative episteme of modernity still predominant in the field.