Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- Acknowledgments
- Chapter 1 What Can we Learn from Louis Dumont?
- Chapter 2 A Contrarian's Most Contrarian Notion: Dumont on Hierarchy
- Chapter 3 Our Individualism and Its Religious Origins
- Chapter 4 The Comparative Risks of Comparison: On Not “Remaining Caged within Our Own Frame of Reference”
- Chapter 5 Conclusion: Dumont's Morality and Social Cosmology
- References
- Index
Chapter 1 - What Can we Learn from Louis Dumont?
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- Acknowledgments
- Chapter 1 What Can we Learn from Louis Dumont?
- Chapter 2 A Contrarian's Most Contrarian Notion: Dumont on Hierarchy
- Chapter 3 Our Individualism and Its Religious Origins
- Chapter 4 The Comparative Risks of Comparison: On Not “Remaining Caged within Our Own Frame of Reference”
- Chapter 5 Conclusion: Dumont's Morality and Social Cosmology
- References
- Index
Summary
During the 1960s, Lévi-Strauss was the most prestigious name in the domain of the human sciences. But, for me as for some others, the work of Dumont had been the most decisive.
Tzvetan Todorov (Todorov 2002, 218)By most conventional accounts, the chief contemporary presence of the study of religion begun by Durkheim and his immediate circle is Claude Lévi-Strauss. But while in the study of myth, ritual, totemism, or symbolism, Lévi-Strauss' name comes readily enough to mind, little else bearing directly on the study of religion can be attributed to the father of modern structuralism. Far more directly involved in the study of religion, but oddly enough far less appreciated despite being so, is the French structuralist Louis Dumont (1911–1998). Going even further beyond just the study of religion, historian Mark Lilla claims that “after Lévi-Strauss surely the most important anthropologist in postwar France was Louis Dumont” (Lilla 1999, 41). Despite what many may imagine, as far as structural studies of religion are concerned, true pride of place should probably be yielded to Dumont as someone generally overshadowed by Lévi-Strauss' brilliant reputation. As suggested by the recent critique of Lévi-Strauss by Maurice Godelier, at best, Levi-Strauss occupies an ambiguous position in religious studies (Godelier 1999, 21f).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Dumont on ReligionDifference, Comparison, Transgression, pp. 1 - 20Publisher: Acumen PublishingPrint publication year: 2008