Antropodi: Keynote Lecture by Soumhya Venkatesan - Comparison, Gains and Losses

What do anthropologists do when they compare, what do people do when they compare? Professor Soumhya Venkatesan shows how comparison produces meaning, including fresh ways of understanding the world and making particular projects worthwhile by way of contrast. Equally, she asks: when does comparison stop being helpful? When might greater insights be gained by staying with things? She will think through these questions ethnographically as well as synthetically, the latter mainly by focusing on decolonisation and its aspirational reach. Soumhya Venkatesan is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester. She is the author of Decolonizing Anthropology: An Introduction (2024, Polity). She has conducted ethnographic fieldwork in South India among Muslim weavers and Hindu priests, and in England among freedom-loving Brexiteers and pub philosophers. Venkatesan's keynote lecture was recorded on June 16, 2025 in Helsinki at the conference organized by the Finnish Anthropological Society.