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Seven Kinds of Hierarchy in Homo Hierarchicus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

Pauline Kolenda
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Extract

I began the work of this paper by trying to specify the different kinds of “hierarchy” that Louis Dumont uses in Homo Hierarchicus. Such an inventory, I thought, might be helpful to those who find the book difficult to read. Unexpectedly, in the course of the exercise, I began to uncover Dumont's argument and to find what I take to be solutions to two of the problems I had continued to have with this monumental work, even though it had been amply reviewed and discussed. I had been troubled by the mystery of “the mantle of our Lady,” that odd process of the encompassing and the encompassed, and the lack of fit between Dumont's model of the Indian caste system and that of his Anglo- American-trained colleagues. In the paper below, I present the inventory, argument, and solutions mentioned, as well as their implications for an understanding of Homo Hierarchicus by the empirically oriented social scientist.

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Articles
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The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 35 , Issue 4 , August 1976 , pp. 581 - 596
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1976

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References

1 Originally published in French by Editions Gallimard, Paris, 1966. English translation by Mark Sainsbury published by George Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, and the University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1970. I shall henceforth cite Homo Hierarchicus as HH; page numbers will refer to the English translation.

2 Reviews appeared by Yalman, Nur, Man, IV (1969), pp. 123–31;CrossRefGoogle ScholarMarriott, McKim, American Anthropologist, LXXI (1969), pp. 1166–75;CrossRefGoogle ScholarLeach, E. R., South Asian Review, IV (1971), pp. 233–37Google Scholar; Khare, R. S., Journal of Asian Studies, XXX (1971), pp. 859–68Google Scholar; Berreman, Gerald D., Man, n.s. VI (1971), p. 515CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tambiah, S. J., American Anthropologist, LXXIV (1972), pp. 823–35Google Scholar. Contributions to Indian Sociology [hereafter CIS], n.s. (1971) contained nine reviews by leading Indianists, as well as a reply by Dumont.

3 HH, p. 78.

4 Review by Kolenda, Pauline of HH in Journal of the American Oriental Society, XCIII, 1 (1973), pp. 121–24.Google Scholar

5 Yalman, p. 125.

6 HH, p. 35.

7 Mayer, ”The Dominant Caste in a Region of Central India,” Southwestern Journal ofAnthropology, XIV (1958), pp. 407–27; Srinivas, ”The Dominant Caste in Rampura,” American Anthropologist, LXI (1959), pp. 1–16.

8 Evans-Pritchard, The Nuer, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940.

9 , Dumont, line Sous-caste de I'lnde du Sud, Paris: Mouton, 1957.Google Scholar

10 HH, p. 35.

11 HH, p. xiii.

12 Dumont, “On Putative Hierarchy and Some Allergies to It,” CIS, n.s. V (1971), p. 59.

13 HH, p. xiii.

14 , Dumont, Religion/Politics and History in India, Paris and the Hague: Mouton, 1970.Google Scholar

15 CIS, II (1958), pp. 8–10, 25–26.

16 , Bougié, Essays on the Caste System (Cambridge: University Press, 1971), p. 39.Google Scholar

17 HH, p. 61.

18 HH, p. 49.

19 HH, p. 30.

20 20 HH, p. 55. In this argument about the jajmāni system, Dumont is strongly influenced by A. M. Hocart, who described for Ceylon a kind of village court ritual system, in which a number of castes removed pollution for the village lord. See Hocart, Caste, London: Methuen & Co., 1950.

21 HH, p. 108.

22 Ibid.

23 CIS, II (1958), p. 269.

24 HH, pp. 79–91, 130–46.

25 HH, p. 67.

26 HH, pp. 72–73.

27 Religion/Politics … (n. 14 above), pp. 62–88.

28 Essays … (n. 16 above), pp. 30, 52, 70.

29 HH, p. 74.

30 HH, p. 72.

31 CIS, IV (1960), p. 88.

32 HH, p. 76.

33 HH, p. 153.

34 CIS, III (1959), pp. 88–101.

35 See, for example, Krader, Lawrence, Formation of the State, Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1968.Google Scholar

36 HH, p. 76.

37 HH, pp. xii, 212.

38 HH, p. 78.

39 “Renunciation in Indian Religion,” in Religion/Politics … (n. 14 above), pp. 40–41.

40 “The Conception of Kingship in Ancient India,” in Religion/Politics …, p. 77.

41 ”A Fundamental Problem in the Sociology of Caste,” in Religion/Politics …, p. 154.

42 HH, p. 78.

43 HH, p. 196.

44 HH, p. 38.

45 CIS, n.s. V (1971), p. 86.

46 HH, p. 32. CIS, VII I (1965), p. 88.

47 HH, pp. 20, 252.

48 HH, p. 66.

49 HH, pp. 232, 340.

50 Man, IV (1969), pp. 123–31.

51 HH, pp. 60, 213.

52 HH, p. 42.

53 HH, pp. 34, 63.

54 “World Renunciation in Indian Religions,” in Religion/Politics … (n. 14 above), p. 50.

55 HH, p. 194.

56 “Religion, Politics, and Society in the Individualistic Universe,” Proceedings of the Royal Anthropological Institute 1970, pp. 31–41; “The Emancipation of Economics from Morality: Mandeville's Fable of the Bees,” Social Science Information, XIV, 1 (Summer 1975), pp. 35–52; “On the Comparative Understanding of Non-Modern Civilizations.” Daedalus, Spring 1975, pp. 153–72.

57 HH, p. 78.

58 “An Application of the Theory of Themes to Hindu Culture,” in Zamora, Mario D., Mahar, J. Michael, and Orenstein, Henry (eds.), Themes In Culture (Quezon City, Philippines: Kayumanggi Publishers, 1971), pp. 307–25.Google Scholar

59 The Conception of Kingship in Ancient India, in Religion/Politics … (n. 14 above), p. 74.

60 Ibid., pp. 83–84.

61 The Wonder That Was India (New York: Grove Press, 1954), p. 135.Google Scholar

62 Ibid., p. 123.

63 Ibid, p. 88.

64 Ibid., p. 124.

65 HH, p. 91.

66 Beck, Brenda, Peasant Society in Kongu, Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1972Google Scholar, an example.

67 (n. 2 above), p. 1170.

68 HH, p. 75.

69 HH, pp. 263–64.

70 HH, p. 264.

71 For discussions of th e problem, see Milton Singer, “Text and Context in the Study of Religion and Social Change in India, “The Adyar Library Bulletin, XXV, Parts 1–4, pp. 274–303; and When a Great Tradition Modernizes, New York; Praeger Publishers, 1972.Google Scholar

72 Yalman (n. 2 above), p. 125; Marriott (n. 2 above), p. 1170.

73 Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1959.Google Scholar

74 The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology (New York: Basic Books, Inc. 1970), p. 114.Google Scholar

75 Dahrendorf (n. 73 above), p. 159.

76 For the richness of theoretical possibilities, see Sites, Paul, Control: The Basis of Social Order, New York: Dunelle n Pub. Co., 1973Google Scholar; Turner, Jonathan H., The Structure of Sociological Theory, Homewood, 111.: Dorsey Press, 1974Google Scholar; and Cohen, Percy S., Modern Social Theory, New York: Basic Books, 1968.Google Scholar