Dumount, Louis

Homo hierarchicus: the caste system and its implications - Chicago University of Chicago Press 1980 - 490p.

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, this edition includes a lengthy new preface in which Dumont reviews the academic discussion inspired by Appendixes previously omitted from the English translation complete this innovative and influential work.

226169634


Caste India

305.5 DUM