Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and Its Implications (Nature of Human Society) - Softcover

Dumont, Louis

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0226169634 ISBN 13: 9780226169637

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 1981

Synopsis

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.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

This edition includes a lengthy new Preface in which Dumont reviews the academic discussion inspired by Homo Hierarchicus and answers his critics.

About the Author:

Before his death in 1999 Louis Dumont was Professor at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. By far the most influential of Indian anthropologists who have worked on India, Dumont's work is mandatory for all students of Indian anthropology.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 1981
• ISBN 10: 0226169634
• ISBN 13: 9780226169637
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 540