Louis Dumont

Louis Dumont (1911 with Salonique - 1998) is a Anthropologue French specialist in the India, which nourished a major reflection on the Western companies on the basis of comparative analysis.

The work of Dumont fits in the current Structuraliste, and relates to the whole of the fields of the social sciences: philosophy, history, right, political sciences, sociology and anthropology, which are indebted for him in a new manner of apprehending contours of the Modernité.

Biography

Louis Dumont was a pupil of Marcel Mauss with Paris, within the Institute of ethnology.
1945 : it integrates the National museum of arts and the popular traditions, where it continues its formation and its activtiés of research. It is also the occasion to publish the scientific magazine the Month of French ethnography , and to direct a programme of study on French furniture.
1948 : it leaves for the India the south to carry out its ground on the Pramalai Kallar, in order to write its thesis of State.
1951 : it publishes the Tarasque a Monographie made before its departure for Asia, on this belief of Provence which it analyzed under the angle of the religious practices of the area.
1951 to 1955 : he teaches at the Institute of anthropology of Oxford.
1955 : he becomes director of study to the practical École of the high studies, where he creates in collaboration with D. Thorner the Center of Indian studies, and founds the review Contribution to Indian sociology with D. Podock. It is the occasion then of several stays in India of North, in Uttar Pradesh.
1957 : it publishes its thesis of State: a under-caste of India of the South .

For more information, consult the Dictionnaire of the ethnology and anthropology of Kindness-Izard., with PUF

Concept of “hierarchical relation”

One must in Louis Dumont have given a theoretical dimension to the concept of hierarchical relation . For that, it was based on its studies on the systems of caste in India and its Western glance marked a thorough egalitarianism.

The hierarchical relation would be thus according to him the demonstration of a transcendence in the middle of the social life, which highlights the character external of what founds a company.

From a structuralist point of view, the social world would be organized according to a hierarchical principle and the relations of opposition (right/left, Adam/Eve, Pape/King) would be to think on a hierarchical mode: the two terms of the oppositions are not to think like equal, one of both is higher than different because including the second term. Known as differently, one of the term represents totality at the same time as part of the opposition. Example: Eve is made starting from the coast of Adam. At the same time as there is creation of an otherness there is assertion of a superiority of Adam. One can reduce in logical term as follows/[Adam/Eve] that is to say/parts For the same demostration between Pope and King, right hand and left hand, cf L.Dumont, Tests on individualism: an anthropological prospect on the modern ideology , Paris, Threshold, 1985

Glances on the Western company

In order to pose a new glance on the history and the characteristics of the Western company, L. Dumont proposed a theoretical confrontation with the Indian company, radically different. This “anthropological turning” allowed an original reflection on the ideology and the eigenvalues each one of these two cultures.

By a comparative analysis, it shows a clear opposition between these two civilizations: if Indian civilization is characterized by a thought of the Hiérarchie (the system of castes), then Western civilization is characterized by a thought of the equality. Pareillement, if the ideology holist prevails in India, then it is the ideology Individualiste which prevails in the same way in occident.

It is necessary however to keep in mind that even in the democratic regimes, where the individuals must be free, equal, carried out by the rational thought, there is not less one social structure which tallies and determines the expression of the individuality of each one. On this subject, one can refer to work of Durkheim, or more recently those of Bourdieu.

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