Louis Dumont

The anthropological community and ideology

ion’. This is the ransom we pay for our attachment to the difference, to the concrete; it is, then, the ransom of our dignity. The same goes for the heaviness and complication of our surest methods. There can be no doubt, either, that our instruments are for the most part imperfect and need to be improved. But it would be unwise to reject them, as though they could be straightway replaced by perfect instruments, for the complex nature of the task precludes such a hope. Let us take the category of ’kinship’. In the present state of affairs, this category combines, imperfectly no doubt, universalism and concrete difference, and as such it is not entirely devoid of value (&dquo;Sur Mauss&dquo;, pp. 19, 20; cf. above, note 1). The anthropologist’s task is by nature such that his work is characterized by a deep-rooted tension, which accords both with the rigour and with the ambition of the discipline, and determines its progress. Upon reflection, one perceives that many contemporary attitudes which are not new, although they may have found favor in the emerging generation express a rejection, often an unconscious one no doubt, of this tension. To verify this, one would need a whole book; but it may be that the destiny of anthropology is here at stake: will it succeed in maintaining its vocation and its unity, or is it already succumbing to the multifarious pressures of the very same modern ideology which gave it birth?

On the Nature of Caste in India A Review Symposium on Louis Dumont's Homo Hierarchicus : 10 On Putative Hierarchy and Some Allergies To It

his own opinion and the speciality as a whole to develop on each point whatever consensus it is capable of. Moreover, the present symposium is perhaps representative of the diversity of views found in the field, not of the most articulate and influential type of opposition to Homo Hierarchicus (henceforth H.H.) as found within a considerable body of reviews and review articles. In order to honour