Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and its Implications

by Louis Dumont

1970, Paperback, 432 pages

Genres: Anthropology, Sociology, India, Nonfiction, History, Social Science, Humanities

431 pages

First published January 1, 1966

About the author

French anthropologist. He was an associate professor at Oxford University during the 1950s, and director at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris.

Reviews

[Anuragkureel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dumont has provided Book-view of the caste. For him the underlying principle of caste is hierarchy, defined as the supremacy of the pure over the impure. He has compared Indian society with that of western societies indicating Indian society as based on the concepts of totality or holism whereas western societies as based on Individualism which supports equality. He explains that Indian society is based on the ideal of inequality, this inequality is not opposite to equality rather it is the gradation of individuals on the basis of purity i.e. Hierarchy.

[Ainslee · Rating 5 out of 5]

What I originally thought was a very dry and irrelevant book to the area of anthropology (it's more of a sociological book), turned out to be an awesome book. It explains how the caste system in India works, and also explains how this is relevant to the wider world. It also explains just how important the caste system is within Indian society, and how it has survived and evolved over the years with many societal changes.

[Luxi · Rating 5 out of 5]

if i can have only 5 books to bring to an island for a while, i will take this Dumont with me. Like Lévy-Strauss, Dumont is one of my favorite authors, together they shed light to my tunnel.

i also recommend all Dumont's books, absolutely all.

[Clint · Rating 4 out of 5]

Essential reading for anyone interested in the debate on caste.

[Thomas Ray]

Dumont sought to describe a society he assumed eternal and unchanging, based on ancient Brahminic ideals. --Thomas Piketty, /Capital and Ideology/, 2020, pp. 319-320.

[Simon Lavoie · Rating 3 out of 5]

L'anthropologue français Louis Dumont livre ici le fruit d'une recherche sérieuse étalée sur plus de vingt ans. Sa maîtrise documentaire est certaine avec des limites reconnues (la littérature d'après 1966 n'est pas couverte).

Homo Hierarchicus est sa contribution à la sociologie comparative des "idéologies, idées et valeurs" des cultures ou sociétés, par la mise à distance difficile mais nécessaire de celles qui nous sont chères. La perspective directrice est livrée dans des termes d'abord généraux : distinguant une ontologie (un "inventaire du mobilier") de la substance - de l'élément auto-suffisant -, et une ontologie de la relation constituante. Nous passons de ce niveau à celui de l'objet sociologique proprement dit. L'analyse structurale, facette épistémologique de l'ontologie des relations, est dite adéquate aux sociétés traditionnelles, à la manière dont elles se représentent consciemment à leur membre.

L'essentiel de HH est une illustration de cette proposition.

Le lecteur peu familier de la littérature spécialisée et de l'histoire indienne risque d'être rebuté et désorienté. Privé d'une appropriation des auteurs, l'exercice par lequel Dumont prend le contre-pied de ceux-ci et établit un dialogue lui sera fastidieux.

Dans le même ordre d'idée, son apport théorique à l'anthropologie sociale requiert une absorption patiente et attentive pour être apprécié. Passé notre répulsion sacrée envers la hiérarchie, les raisons de cette difficulté tiennent au style et à la personnalité de l'auteur : discret, nuancé, s'interdisant la grandiloquence et la rhétorique. Il s'ensuit que les passages phares et centraux, les points culminants de l'exposé ne ressortent pas avec l'évidence qui convient - se confondent dans le lot.

Un des postulats de fond ici est que les sociétés comptent partout les mêmes traits constitutifs : individus empiriques ou biologiques, pouvoir, division du travail, parenté, religion. Ces traits sont diversement agencés - hiérarchisés - d'une société ou culture à l'autre, et l'identité et la nature même de ces traits se transforment suivant leur mode d'agencement-hiérarchisation. Cette combinatoire ne structure pas un mode de vie, une culture, c'est-à-dire des rapports (à soi, à autrui, aux objets) en vertu de la causalité inhérente au support physique qui lui serait présumée ; mais en fonction des références et renvois actifs des membres de cette culture à des distinctions hiérarchiques (pur / impur dans le cas présent). Ce que Dumont désigne comme hiérarchie est la "gradation des éléments d'un ensemble par rapport [ou par référence] à cet ensemble", et "L'englobement du contraire." Ainsi, relativement à un ensemble que l'on délimitera comme "déplacer la table de la cuisine vers le salon", des éléments se définissent-ils (comme "prendre la table", "prendre les chaises", "soulever" etc.) et acquièrent-ils une gradation ou priorité sur d'autres éléments (comme "texter", "manger des chips", etc.).


Je me suis consacré à une défense et une réhabilitation de la métaphysique holiste en anthropologie ces dernières années, avec seulement une connaissance de biais des travaux de Dumont : c'est-à-dire par le biais des critiques de ses travaux. J'ai maintenant le sentiment que, de ces critiques (celles de Appadurai en particulier), peu font réellement le poids ; considérant en particulier le soin porté dans HH à la fluidité et à la souplesse des distinctions et inter-dépendances de castes, attestant de leur définition relationnelle. Il m'apparaît mieux que Dumont a défendu cette métaphysique avec une autorité tout aussi indéniable que discrète.

[versarbre · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is respectable that Dumont assumes such an arduous task to carve out details for an Indian society that is oriented toward a whole. It is amazing that he has Parsons and American sociologists who worked on U.S. social materials in mind when he proposes a sociological theory of hierarchy as an interconnected whole that links together different levels. But obviously he has no interests at all as to the Indian connection to the rest of the world during or before his fieldwork. What about the trades across the Indian seas over the centuries, if not talking about the capitalist-imperialist world system. The dream of totality and the uniqueness of the West seems to be such a Hegelian task. It seems that Dumont was also unmoved by the revolutionary craze in his time (well, he studied Sanskrit in Prison). In any case, Dumont is a first-class social theorist who is able to engage with the whole sociologically. That's not an easy task.

[Leonardo]

Como demostraba Louis Dumont en su Homo hierarchicus, la jerarquía social siempre es inconsistente, es decir, su propia estructura descansa en una paradójica inversión (la esfera superior es, por supuesto, superior a la inferior, pero, dentro del orden inferior, lo inferior es superior a lo superior), a cuenta de lo cual la jerarquía social nunca puede englobar a todos sus elementos.

Viviendo en el Final de los Tiempos Pág.483

[J.D. Steens · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dumont uses the Indian caste system to establish a universal sociological point (law): human organization is inherently hierarchical. He goes on to say that Westerners fight hierarchical notions because we’ve been indoctrinated with thoughts about equality. Because of that, we are blind to the benefits that hierarchical social organization brings. There is not only order, which includes those on the lower rungs accepting their inferior position, but that order best ensures the welfare of the whole.

I get the sense that Dumont's conclusion is infused with his own philosophical bent, which is along the lines of Plato’s Republic where it was argued that society was organized hierarchically (Philosopher Kings, warriors, the working class) to ensure order and benefits for all. This is somewhat akin to India’s caste system except that in India, the Brahmins (priests-philosophers) and warriors (rulers) were separated, not united as in the Philosopher-King.

There’s no mention by Dumont of Plato’s Laws, which are more in line with what is seen as India’s caste system. Dumont argues that this system is ultimately based on religion and, specifically, on the division between clean and unclean when it comes to the tasks of disposing of dead bodies. To keep pure, the Brahmins had to remove, and not sully, themselves from such impurities.* (There’s no mention by Dumont that the point of purity was oneness with the divine, which is another parallel with Plato, the motivation for which required separation from bodily concerns. The deeper question is why is there this preoccupation with Oneness with the divine.) To enforce this division, a rigorous system of unwritten rules and expectations was set up to keep the proper social order in place. Hence, the similarities to Plato’s Laws. What you have here is an elaborate system set up to protect the interests of the ruling class (priests whose job it was more to propound than work) and their allies, those who held political power, at the expense of the workers and outcastes who lived and worked at their mercy.**

An argument can be, and has been, made that those on the lower rungs of the social ladder can be content with their place as long as they are fed with a modicum of benefits, including entertainment (“bread and circuses”) and the security of themselves and their families.*** That’s a self-serving story line as it would entail immense costs that would be incurred if one deviated from the prevailing social order.

Looked at from the perspective of biological principles where the self’s interested rules, a counter argument can be made that the need to be free is paramount, and equality is freedom’s prerequisite. The self’s interests include the need to be part of group life and to seek the interests of the group as well as the self, but it, distinctly, does not mean that the social order should violate the norms of equality and reciprocity. In other words, it’s the exact opposite to Dumont’s argument. The self’s interest can and typically does include the good of the whole argument that Dumont makes in connection with the caste system. Social order is best served by promoting and protecting the interests of the whole. It is not based on subjugated caste-like division. (And, how much social and economic talent is locked down within the lower castes and outcaste divisions?)

No doubt there is a natural inequality that comes with birth, but rather than society lauding its virtues and protecting its interests that way, the laws, rules and customs should be that everyone contributes in their own way to the good of the whole and they are respected and honored for it. Those who violate this norm should be pounced upon and kept in their own place, even if this means, in the old Indian saying, “the best hunter eats last.”

*”The view of the ordered whole, in which each is assigned his place, is fundamentally religious,” Dumont writes. “The language of religion is the language of hierarchy, and that hierarchy is necessarily…a matter of pure and impure.”

**Almost as a throwaway, there’s this line by Dumont that in a nutshell captures the essence of what’s going on in the caste system. “There are, briefly, two kinds of castes: Those who hold the land, and those who do not.”

***Referencing de Broglie observation about the quantum world, Dumont says that individuality remains within a fused system. The emphasis by the West on equality and freedom is that there’s no commitment to the interests of the whole. That is an errant argument. Tribalism in its various iterations is built, biologically, into our soul. With the group, the individual survives; without it, the self dies. Patriotism, both good and bad, has everything to do with the “good of the whole.” Dumont makes his sociological point - and his universal - by arguing that at the superior level there is unity; at the inferior level there is distinction. How subjugation is unity is baffling, unless serious hoodwinking is put in place, which could very well be the way India’s caste system is best characterized.

[Michel Van Goethem · Rating 5 out of 5]

Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and Its Implications (Paperback)
by Louis Dumont 449p - 1966 -1978

[Mark Granfors · Rating 4 out of 5]

Difficult reading, but an important corrective to those who use "caste" as a pejorative, rather than a descriptive term.

[Kumari Anchal · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't know but I didn't get the book except for some chapter

[Luísa Cibreiros · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this book, Dumont present us with his analysis of the indian caste system. In terms of anthropological theory, his work contains an amazing description of a main concept in anthropology: social structure. Adding to Evans Pritchard's and Levi Strauss's concepts, Dumont includes the hierarchy in the idea of social structure and teach us how important it is to comprehend the opposition as an element that presents the importance of "value" in the social - relations - structure. In the end of the book, i may say that his examples (of Adam and Eve and the left/right hand) made me think A LOT about what he was trying to teach us - it made me doubt him at some point, i admit-, and although i truly believe that he didn't mean to harm the idea of equality, i still feel a bit uncomfortable with his concepts of hierarchy and values (and maybe that is because i am from another generation....).

Beyond that, Homo Hierarchucus is an intelectual travel to Indian culture, especially to their caste system.

[Alice Jennings · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not that useful to me at first glance as I was told to read about India for my Japanese major, but quite good at explaining about how caste systems work in general. Could be made slightly clearer, had to reread a fair bit of it

[Sam Schulman · Rating 4 out of 5]

It doesnt quite go into its implications except by implication - which was vexing to me. But it does present caste formation as an inevitable part of human nature.

[Sofia · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good literature that explains the inherent values in caste. I hope somebody would further Dumont's study.

[Pradeep Singarakannan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wanna read this book