I came to add:
map(str.strip, string.split(','))
but saw it had already been mentioned by Jason Orendorff in a comment.
Reading Glenn Maynard's comment in the same answer suggesting list comprehensions over map I started to wonder why. I assumed he meant for performance reasons, but of course he might have meant for stylistic reasons, or something else (Glenn?).
So a quick (possibly flawed?) test on my box applying the three methods in a loop revealed:
[word.strip() for word in string.split(',')]
$ time ./list_comprehension.py
real 0m22.876s
map(lambda s: s.strip(), string.split(','))
$ time ./map_with_lambda.py
real 0m25.736s
map(str.strip, string.split(','))
$ time ./map_with_str.strip.py
real 0m19.428s
making map(str.strip, string.split(','))
the winner, although it seems they are all in the same ballpark.
Certainly though map (with or without a lambda) should not necessarily be ruled out for performance reasons, and for me it is at least as clear as a list comprehension.
Edit:
Python 2.6.5 on Ubuntu 10.04