Procedimientos de comparación transcultural : la comparación sucesiva

This article presents a review of scientific and hermeneutical methods that have been formulated throughout the XXth century and links them to the various proposals that have been posed from the Anthropological field on the procedures for cross-cultural comparison. The hologeist comparison proposed by Tylor follows the conceptions of inductive method, which is also behind the controlled comparison developed by Radcliffe-Brown, while the second major hologeist project, by Murdock -based on the development of a large ethnographic file: the Human Relation Area Files-, follows the post-popperian idea of testing previously formulated hypotheses. The digital version of the HRAF can easily reintroduce cultural contexts, overcoming the criticism that was made from Boas onwards concerning global comparisons.However, the central thesis here stands that if the abductive method and the structural conception of theories are applied to ethnography -considering that ethnographies do not necessarily set causal relationships between socio-cultural elements, some of them previously interpreted- we can integrate scientific and hermeneutical methods and therefore apply the development dynamics of scientific theories in order to establish the reach of anthropological theories.