This course seeks to engage both new and enduring questions in comparative social research. It is designed to encourage students to think critically and creatively about the study of politics and the political in comparative perspective and to provide the intellectual foundations for the development of their own research agendas. In the course, we read works of social research that take seriously the spatial and temporal contexts that embed relations of power and exchange. Such contexts may be local or global, and comparisons may be explicit or implicit. A central objective is to generate new questions for comparative inquiry--questions that emerge through our engagement with fieldwork-based research and open novel avenues for theorization. The seminar is open to graduate students from any department at NSSR; some seminar participants may wish to use the course in preparation for the qualifying exam in comparative politics, but it is not designed exclusively for this purpose.