Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and Its Implications

By Louis Dumont

Book Overview

Louis Dumont's modern classic, here presented in an enlarged, revised, and corrected second edition, simultaneously supplies that reader with the most cogent statement on the Indian caste system and its organizing principles and a provocative advance in the comparison of societies on the basis of their underlying ideologies. Dumont moves gracefully from the ethnographic data to the level of the hierarchical ideology encrusted in ancient religious texts which are revealed as the governing conception of the contemporary caste structure. On yet another plane of analysis, homo hierarchicus is contrasted with his modern Western antithesis, homo aequalis.

This edition includes a lengthy new Preface in which Dumont reviews the academic discussion inspired by Homo Hierarchicus and answers his critics. A new Postface, which sketches the theoretical and comparative aspects of the concept of hierarchy, and three significant Appendixes previously omitted from the English translation complete this innovative and influential work.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0226169634
• ISBN13: 9780226169637
• Release Date: January 1981
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Length: 540 Pages
• Weight: 1.31 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.4" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Missing the point

This text is not REALLY about caste. It is similar to Strathern's Gender of the Gift and her use of "Melanesia". Just as her book was epistemology rather than ethnography, so is Dumont's treatment of this phenomenon. He is actually using the theory of caste to explain his notion of hierarchy as the basic supposition within a culture as opposed to the western notions of equality/individualism. He, throughout the book, refers to the difference between IDEAL hierarchy (where power is completely subordinate to status) and CONCRETE hierarchy (where status is not absolute!). I would say this is a difficult text to begin with...and if you are looking for an ethnographic account of caste, you may find this text difficult to understand and disappointing. However, is you consider this an intellectual exercise in the nature of hierarchy and equality, you cannot find a better text!