Book Review: Aullón de Haro, P. (ed.) (2012). Metodologías

Metodologías comparatistas y literatura comparada is the most recent work by the Research Group “Humanismo-Europa”, coordinated by Prof. Pedro Aullón de Haro, from the University of Alicante, in Spain. This body of work, following on from the line of a previous work, Teoría del Humanismo (2010), intends to contribute to the renewal and reconstruction of Human Sciences. With this objective in mind forty researchers have worked together to theoretically establish the comparative method, addressing the necessity of a methodology in the field of humanities and social sciences caused by the globalization process. As the editor explains in the introductory chapter “Metodologías y Comparatismo”, the generalized process of globalization increasingly demands the diverse sciences to expand their fields and objects of study, and as such the researchers consider that the comparative method is the most appropriate method to undertake this task. But as the comparison usually implemented is a comparison derived from neo-positivism-which only compares formal aspects of the object, thus only contributing to the diversification and disunifying process of the diverse disciplines instead of contributing to a humanistic synthesis-, the objective of the researchers has been to reconstruct the comparative method from a historical, conceptual or methodological and programmatic approach, in order to lend it humanistic value. To do so, three fundamental tasks have been undertaken: a historical exposition of comparative literature, of its epistemological basis and of its contemporary reformulation, while also including suggestions for a planned approach t