Homo Hierarchicus - The Caste System and Its Implications

Author: Louis Dumont
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Year: 2002
Language: English
Pages: 490
ISBN/UPC (if available): 0195645472

Description

This book is a major contribution to the general sociological theory of Indian caste. Indeed within that specialized field, it is probably the most important work. This English edition includes a lengthy Preface in which Dumont reviews the academic discussion inspired by this book and answers his critics.

Louis Dumont’s modern classic, here presented in an enlarged, revised, and corrected second edition, simultaneously supplies the 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 ethnographic data to the hierarchical ideology enshrined in ancient religious texts, 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 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 Appendices previously omitted from the English translation complete this innovative and influential work.

EXCERPTS FROM REVIEWS:

‘This book is a major contribution to the general sociological theory of Indian caste. Indeed within that specialized field, it is probably the most important work ever published.’
-Edmund Leach, ‘South Asia Review’

‘A profound contribution to Indian studies, by virtue alone of its encompassing attempt to fit a number of classical and contemporary works into a consistent scheme.’
-S.J. Tambiah, ‘American Anthropologist

Contents

Preface to the Complete English Edition
Preface to the First French Edition
Brief Note on Transliteration of Indian Words

Introduction

CHAPTER I : HISTORY OF IDEAS

CHAPTER II : FROM SYSTEM TO STRUCTURE:
THE PURE AND THE IMPURE

CHAPTER III: HIERARCHY : THE THEORY OF THE VARNA

CHAPTER IV : THE DIVISION OF LABOUR

CHAPTER V: THE REGULATION OF MARRIAGE :
SEPARATION AND HIERARCHY

CHAPTER VI: RULES CONCERNING CONTACT AND FOOD

CHAPTER VII: POWER AND TERRITORY

CHAPTER VIII: CASTE GOVERNMENT:
JUSTICE ANDAUTHORITY

CHAPTER IX: CONCOMITANTS AND IMPLICATIONS

CHAPTER X : COMPARISON: ARE THERE CASTES AMONG NON-HINDUS AND OUTSIDE INDIA?

CHAPTER XI : COMPARISON (CONCLUDED)


Conclusion
Appendix A
Appendix B
Appendix C
Appendix D

Maps
Notes
Bibliography
Index