Comparison without othering: a Meta-Viewpoint Model of Equivalence

Comparative research on political agency and belonging in asymmetric social fields faces a foundational methodological challenge: how to construct equivalence between structurally unequal actors without inadvertently reproducing the existing hierarchies or categories and classifications constituted by the positioning strategies of the actors we seek to understand. This article proposes the Meta-Viewpoint Model of Equivalence (MVM) as a methodological response to this challenge. Building on, and moving beyond, Weber’s ideal-typical comparative strategy and Isin’s genealogical–phenomenological approach, the MVM treats equivalence not as a pre-given property of cases but as the outcome of a reflexive and procedurally constrained research design. The article shows that Weber’s framework risks essentialising dominant trajectories as the norm, while Isin’s framework, despite foregrounding alterity and marginalised agency, lacks a procedural mechanism for disciplining cross-group comparison. In the domain of cross-cultural measurement, Berry’s positivistic programme addresses this problem by demanding strict measurement invariance at the actor-construct level, treating non-invariance as bias to be corrected in order to recover a universal latent trait; Toomela’s structural-systemic critique, by contrast, argues that such invariance is often illusory because constructs are historically embedded in distinct activity systems, and concludes that large-N comparisons should give way to idiographic inquiry. The MVM offers a third route that integrates the strengths of all four approaches: it accepts Toomela’s insight that items may carry different meanings across positions, but relocates invariance from universal psychological constructs to the relational form of the asymmetric field, thereby preserving Berry’s concern for systematic cross-group inference without universalising one group’s standpoint as the neutral norm. The MVM addresses limitations of these approaches through three interrelated moves: distinguishing between difference in degree and difference in meaning to be measured; relocating invariance from the actor-construct level to the relational form of the field; and grounding equivalence in Kantian mutuality and Rawlsian impartiality as procedural norms. The model is empirically illustrated through a case study of national identity among ethnic Estonians and the Russian-speaking minority, demonstrating that when national identity is operationalised through position-specific, high-cost items and compared at the level of relational form, majority and minority attachments to the Estonian nation state appear more balanced than conventional positivist scales suggest. The MVM advances both the methodology of comparative research on political agency and the broader project of epistemic justice.