The history of the use of comparison as a method of study in social anthropology goes back to the 19th century. It was a period strongly influenced by evolution.
The use of comparison begins from Durkheim to Evans-Pritchard in British social anthropology. The early researchers had the following objects in employing comparison as a dependable method for data generation:
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(1) It is through this method that social anthropologists reconstruct the past and discover the laws which govern social processes. As a matter of fact, comparison of particular features of social life for the purpose of historical reconstruction has great value.
Actually, such a kind of exercise helps explore the varieties or forms of social life as a basis for the theoretical study of human social phenomena. This objective has been greatly stressed by Radcliffe- Brown.
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(2) It is through this that we make classification of the social systems in different categories such as caste, class and groups. Radcliffe- Brown observed in his famous Chicago seminar of 1937:
I would suggest that an examination of the other science immediately suggests that the first step in social science will be to undertake the task of taxonomy and classification, and in the first instance, the classification of social systems themselves.
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I propose that no scientific study of societies can get very far until we have made some progress towards a classification of social systems into whatever types, groups of classes suggest themselves as expedient, that is, likely to lead to valid generalizations with respect to all societies.
Thus, the comparative method is employed for discovering the laws of social processes; and to classify the social systems of all the societies of the world as well. If these two things are attained through comparison, social anthropology would be able to reconstruct the past and classify different societies into specific types.