APPADURAI Putting Hierarchy in Its Place

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Putting Hierarchy in Its Place

Author(s): Arjun AppaduraiSource: Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 3, No. 1, Place and Voice in Anthropological Theory (Feb.,1988), pp. 36-49Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the American Anthropological AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/656307

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Putting Hierarchy in Its PlaceArjun Appadurai

Departmentof AnthropologyUniversityofPennsylvania

Intheessay thatfollows, I shall be concernedwiththegenealogyof an idea.

But beforeI put forward his genealogy, I need to make two preliminaryargu-

ments.The first nvolves the anthropological onstructionof natives. The secondinvolves a defenseof one kind of intellectualhistory.

The Place of the Native

Onthe face of it, an explorationof the ideaof the "native" in anthropolog-ical discoursemay not appear o have muchto do with thegenealogyof the idea

of hierarchy.ButI wish to arguethathierarchy s one of an anthologyof imagesin andthroughwhichanthropologists ave frozen thecontribution f specificcul-

turesto ourunderstanding

f the humancondition.Suchmetonymicfreezing

has

its rootsin a deeperassumptionof anthropologicalhoughtregarding he bound-

edness of culturalunits andthe confinementof the varietiesof humanconscious-

ness withinthese boundaries.Theideaof the "native" is theprincipalexpressionof this assumption,and thus the genealogy of hierarchyneeds to be seen as one

local instanceof thedynamicsof the constructionof natives.

Although he termnativehas a respectableantiquity n Western houghtand

has often beenusedin positiveand self-referentialways, it hasgraduallybecome

the technicalpreserveof anthropologists.Althoughsome otherwordstakenfrom

thevocabulary

ofmissionaries,explorers,

andcolonialadministratorsave been

expungedfromanthropologicalusage, the termnativehas retained ts currency,

servingas a respectablesubstitute or termslikeprimitive,aboutwhich we now

feel some embarrassment.Yet the termnative, whetherwe speakof "nativecat-

egories," or "native belief-systems" or "native agriculture,"conceals certain

ambiguities.We sense this ambiguity,for example, in the restricteduse of the

adjectivenativistic,which is typicallyused not only for one sortof revivalism,

but for revivalismamongcertainkindsof population.Whois a "native" (henceforthwithoutquotationmarks) n theanthropolog-

icalusage?

Thequick

answerto thisquestion

is that thenativeis aperson

who is

born n (andthusbelongs to) the place the anthropologists observingor writingabout.This sense of the wordnativeis fairlynarrowly,andneutrally,tied to its

Latinetymology. But do we use the termnativeuniformly o referto peoplewho

arebornin certainplaces and, thus, belongto them?We do not. We have tended

36



HIERARCHY 37

to use the wordnative for personsand groupswho belong to those partsof the

worldthatwere, andare, distantfromthe metropolitanWest. This restrictions,

in part, tied to the vagariesof our ideologies of authenticityover the last twocenturies.Propernativesare somehow assumedto represent heir selves andtheir

history,withoutdistortionor residue. We exemptourselvesfrom thissortof claim

to authenticitybecause we are too enamoredof the complexitiesof ourhistory,the diversitiesof oursocieties, and the ambiguitiesof our collective conscience.

Whenwe findauthenticity lose to home, we are morelikely to label itfolk than

native,theformerbeinga termthatsuggests authenticitywithoutbeingimplicitly

derogatory.The anthropologisthusrarelythinksof himself as a nativeof some

place, even whenhe knows thathe is from somewhere. So whatdoes it mean to

be a native of some place, if it meanssomethingmore, or other,thanbeing fromthatplace?

What it means is that natives are not only persons who are from certain

places, andbelong to thoseplaces, butthey are also those who are somehow in-

carcerated,or confined, in thoseplaces.' What we need to examine is this attri-

butionorassumptionof incarceration, f imprisonment,orconfinement.Whyare

somepeopleseen as confinedto, andby, theirplaces?

Probably he simplestaspectof the common sense of anthropologyo which

this image corresponds s the sense of physical immobility. Natives are in one

place, a place to which explorers, administrators,missionaries,and eventuallyanthropologists, ome. Theseoutsiders,theseobservers,areregardedas quintes-

sentiallymobile; they are the movers, the seers, the knowers. The natives are

immobilizedby theirbelongingto a place. Of course, when observersarrive,na-

tives arecapableof moving to anotherplace. But this is not really motion;it is

usually flight, escape, to anotherequally confiningplace.The slightlymore subtleassumptionbehind the attribution f immobilityis

not so muchphysicalas ecological. Nativesarethose who are somehowconfined

to places by their connection to whatthe place permits.Thus all the languageof

niches, of foraging,of materialskill, of slowly evolved technologies, is actuallyalso a languageof incarceration.nthisinstanceconfinements notsimplya func-

tion of themysterious,even metaphysicalattachment f native tophysicalplaces,but a functionof theiradaptationso theirenvironments.

Ofcourse,anthropologists avelongknown thatmotion is partof the normal

round for many groups, rangingfrom Bushmen and Australianaborigines, to

CentralAsiannomadsandSoutheastAsian swiddenagriculturalists.Yet most ofthesegroups,because theirmovementsareconfinedwithin smallareasandappearto be drivenby fairlyclear-cutenvironmental onstraints,aregenerallytreatedas

nativestied not so muchto a place as to a patternof places. This is still not quitemotionof the free, arbitrary,adventurous ort associated with metropolitanbe-havior. It is still incarceration, ven if over a largerspatialterrain.

But the criticalpartof the attribution f nativenessto groups n remotepartsof the world is a sense thattheirincarceration as a moral andintellectualdimen-sion. Theyareconfinedby whattheyknow, feel, andbelieve. Theyareprisonersof their "mode of thought." This is, of course, an old and deep theme in the



38 CULTURALANTHROPOLOGY

historyof anthropologicalhought,and its mostpowerfulexampleis to be found

in Evans-Pritchard'sictureof the Azande, trapped n their moralweb, confined

by a way of thinkingthat admitsof no fuzzy boundariesand is splendidin itsinternalconsistency. AlthoughEvans-Pritchards generallycareful not to exag-

gerate hedifferencesbetweenEuropeanand Azandementality,his position sug-

gests thatthe Azande areespeciallyconfinedby theirmodeof thought:

Aboveall,we have o be carefulo avoid n theabsence f nativedoctrine onstruct-

inga dogmawhichwe would ormulate erewe to actas Azandedo. Theres noelaboratendconsistentepresentationf witchcrafthatwill accountn detail or ts

workings, orof naturewhichexpoundstsconformityosequences nd unctionalinterrelations.he Zandeactualizeshesebeliefsratherhan ntellectualizeshem,and heir enetsareexpressednsocially ontrolledehavioratherhan n doctrines.Hence hedifficulty f discussinghesubject f witchcraft ithAzande, or theirideasareimprisonedn actionandcannotbe cited to explainand ustifyaction.[Evans-Pritchard937:82-83;mphasismine]

Of course, this idea of certainothers, as confinedby theirway of thinking,in itself appears o have nothingto do with the image of the native, the personwho belongs to a place. The link between the confinementof ideology and the

idea of place is that the way of thoughtthat confines natives is itself somehow

bounded,somehow tied to the circumstantiality f place. The links between in-tellectual and spatialconfinement,as assumptions hatunderpin he idea of the

native, are two. The firstis the notion that culturesare "wholes": this issue is

takenupinthe sectionof thisessay on Dumont. The secondis thenotion,embed-

ded in studiesof ecology, technology, and materialculture over a century,that

the intellectualoperationsof natives are somehow tied to their niches, to their

situations.They areseen, in Levi-Strauss'sevocative terms, as scientists of the

concrete.Whenwe askwherethis concreteness ypicallyinheres,it is to be found

in specificsof flora, fauna,topology, settlementpatterns,and the like;in a word,

it is the concretenessof place. Thus, the confinementof nativeways of thinkingreflects n an importantway their attachmento particularplaces. The science of

theconcretecanthus be writtenas thepoetryof confinement.2

Butanthropologists avealwaysknownthat natives arenotalwaysso incar-

cerated.TheAmericananthropologicalradition,at leastas far back as Boas, and

most recentlyin the voices of Sidney Mintz (1985) and Eric Wolf (1982), has

alwaysseen cultural raitsas sharedand transmitted ver largeculturalareas, as

capableof change, and as creatingshiftingmosaicsof technologyandideology.The French radition,at least in thatpartof it with rootsin HerderandVico, and

morerecentlyin Mauss, BenvenisteandDumezil, has always seen the links, atleast of theIndo-European linguaculture" AttinasiandFriedrich1987), across

many geographically catteredplaces. Even in Britishanthropology, here have

beenminorityvoices, like thoseof LordRaglanand A. M. Hocart,who have seen

thatthe morphologyof social systems andideologies is not confinedby single,

territoriallyanchoredgroupings. It is now increasinglyclear that in many in-

stances whereanthropologistsbelieved they were observingandanalyzingpris-



HIERARCHY 39

tine or historically deep systems, they were in fact viewing productsof recent

transregionalnteractions.Diffusionism, whatever its defects and in whatever

guise, has at least the virtueof allowing everyonethe possibilityof exposureto aworldlarger han their current ocale.

It is even moreevidentthatin today's complex, highly interconnected,me-

dia-dominatedworld, there are fewer and fewer nativecultures eft. They areop-

pressed by the internationalmarketfor the objectsonce iconic of theiridentity,which are now tokens in the drive for authenticity n metropolitancommoditycultures. They are pushed by the forces of development and nationalization

throughouthe world andare attractedby thepossibilitiesof migration orrefuge)in new places. Natives, as anthropologists ike to imagine them, are therefore

rapidlydisappearing.This muchmanywill concede.But were there ever natives, in the sense in which I have arguedthe term

must be understood?Mostgroupsthatanthropologistshave studiedhave in some

way been affectedby the knowledge of otherworlds, worlds about which they

may have learnedthroughmigration,trade,conquest, or indigenousnarratives.

As we dropour own anthropologicalblinders,and as we sharpenour ethnohis-

toricaltools, we arediscoveringthatthe pristinePunanof the interiorof Borneo

wereprobablya specialized adaptation f the largerDayakcommunities,servinga specializedfunction in the world tradein Borneo forest products(Hoffmann

1986);that he San of SouthernAfrica have beeninvolved in acomplexsymbiosiswith othergroupsfor a very long time (Schrire 1980); thatgroupsin Melanesia

have been tradinggoods across very long distancesfor a long time, trade that

reflectscomplexregionalrelationsof supplyand demand Hughes1977);thatAf-

rican "tribes" have been reconstitutingand deconstructingessential structural

principlesat their "internalfrontiers"for a very long time (Kopytoff 1987).Even where contact with large-scaleexternal forces has been, till recently,

minimal, as with some Inuit populations, some populationsin lowland South

America,andmanyAustralianaboriginalgroups, these groupshave constituted

verycomplex"internal" mosaics of trade,marriage,conquest,andlinguisticex-change, which suggests thatno one grouping amongthem was ever trulyincar-

cerated n a specific place and confinedby a specific mode of thought(see, for

example, Myers 1986). Althoughassiduous anthropologistsmight always dis-

coversome borderline xamples, my generalcase is thatnatives,peopleconfinedto and by the places to which they belong, groupsunsulliedby contact with a

largerworld,haveprobablyneverexisted.

Natives, thus, arecreaturesof the anthropological magination.In ourdial-

ogic age, this may not seem like a very bold assertion,but it ramifies in several

directions. If anthropologistshave always possessed a largeamountof informa-tionthat has militatedagainstthe ideaof the native, how have they succeeded in

holdingon to it? How have places turned ntoprisonscontainingnatives?The answerlies in the ways thatplaces have been married o ideas and im-

ages, and here I resume an argumentnitiatedelsewhere(Appadurai1986a). An-

thropologyhas, more thanmany disciplinarydiscourses,operated hroughan al-bum or anthologyof images(changingover time, to be sure)wherebysome fea-




tureof a group s seen as quintessentialo the groupandas especiallytrueof that

groupin contrastwith othergroups. Hierarchy n India has this quality. In the

discourseof anthropology,hierarchy s what is most trueof India and it is truerof Indiathanof anyotherplace.

In the subsequent ections of this essay I shall show that ideas thatbecome

metonymicprisonsfor particularplaces (such that the nativesof thatplace are

inextricably onfinedby them)themselveshave a spatialhistory,in the evolvingdiscourseof anthropology. deas andimagesnotonly travelfromplace to place,butthey periodicallycome intocompelling configurations, onfigurationswhich,once formed, resist modificationor critique. By looking at Dumont's concep-tualizationof hierarchy n India, I shall explorethe archaeologyof hierarchyas

an imagethat confinesthe natives of India.In the last partof the article,finally,I shallproposea theoryabout the circumstancesunderwhich suchresilientcon-

figurationsend to occurin the historyof anthropologicaldiscourse.

The Genealogy of Hierarchy

The recentwaveof reflexivityamonganthropologists, speciallythoseprac-

ticingin the UnitedStates,has alreadycreateda backlash,foundedon manyres-

ervations, ncludingtemperamental ndstylisticones. But one of the reasonsfor

the backlashhas been the suspicionthat the self-scrutinyof ethnographers ndfieldworkersmightbe a prologueto the extinctionof the object of our studies.

Facedwiththedisappearance f nativesas they imaginedthem, some anthropol-

ogists runtherisk of substituting eflexivityfor fieldwork.I belongto thatgroupof anthropologistswhowish neither o erase theobjectin anorgyof self-scrutiny,nor to fetishize fieldwork(withoutcarefullyrethinkingwhat fieldworkought to

mean andbe in a changingworld), in theway thatVictorianeducators etishized

cold baths andsportas character-buildingevices for the public-schoolelite. So

why engagein any sortof genealogy?

All genealogies are selective, as any good historianof ideas would recog-nize. Theyareselective, that s, notthrough loppinessorprejudice though hese

couldalways creepin), but becauseeverygenealogyis a choice amonga virtuallyinfinite set of genealogies thatmake up the problemof influenceand source in

intellectualhistory. Everyidearamifies ndefinitelybackwardntime, and at each

criticalhistoricaluncture,key ideasramify ndefinitely nto theirownhorizontal,

contemporaryontexts.Nontrivial deas, especially, never have a finite setof ge-

nealogies.Thusanyparticular enealogymust deriveits authorityrom themoral

it seeks to subserve.The genealogy I have constructed n the case of Dumont's

conceptionof hierarchys one suchgenealogy, which subservesmy interest nthe

spatialhistoryof anthropologicaldeas. Thus my genealogy, like any otherge-

nealogy, is an argumentn theguise of a discovery.There s anotherwayto characterizemy position.The sortof genealogyI am

interested n has somethingin commonwith Foucault'ssense of the practicehe

calls "archaeology,"a practicewhich, when successful, uncoversnotjust a ge-netic chain, but an epistemologicalfield and its discursiveformations.The dis-



HIERARCHY 41

cursive formationwith whichI amconcerned,at its largest evel, is thediscourse

of anthropology ver the last century,andwithin it the subdiscoursesaboutcaste

andaboutIndia. This sortof genealogizingis intended o occupythe middlespacebetweenthe atemporalstanceof certain kinds of contemporary riticism(espe-

cially those affectedby deconstruction)and the exclusivist andgenetic assump-tions of most standard pproaches o the historyof ideas.

In Dumont's(1970) conceptionof hierarchyas the key to caste society in

India,we see the convergenceof threedistincttrajectories n Westernthought.These separate rajectories,which come togetherin recentanthropologicalprac-tice, are threefold. First thereis the urgeto essentialize, which characterizedhe

Orientalist orebearsof anthropology.Thisessentialism,whichhas a complicated

genealogy going backto Plato, became for some Orientalists he preferredmodefor characterizing he "other." As Ronald Inden has recently argued (Inden

1986a), this led to a substantialized iew of caste (reifiedas India's essential in-

stitution)and anidealizedview of Hinduism,regardedas thereligiousfoundation

of caste. The second tendency involves exoticizing, by making differencesbe-

tween "self" and other the sole criteria or comparison.This tendencyto exoti-

cize has been discussed extensively in recentcritiquesof the historyof anthro-

pology andof ethnographicwriting(Boon 1982;CliffordandMarcus1986;Fa-

bian 1983) and has its roots in the "Age of Discovery" as well as in the 18th-

century "Age of Nationalism," especially in Germany.The thirdtrajectoryn-volves totalizing,thatis, makingspecific featuresof a society's thoughtor prac-tice notonly its essence but also its totality.Suchtotalizingprobablyhas its roots

in the Germanromanticismof the early 19thcenturyand comes to us in all the

variationsof the idea of the Geist (spirit)of an age or a people. Canonized in

Hegel's holism, its most important esult was the subsequentMarxiancommit-

mentto the idea of totality(Jay 1984), butit also underliesDumont'sconceptionof the "whole," discussedbelow. In this sense, the dialoguebetweenthe ideal-istic and the materialisticdescendantsof Hegel is hardlyover. In anthropology

andin history,particularlyn France,it is to be seen in Mauss's idea of the giftas a total social phenomenonand in the Annalesschool's conceptionof histoiretotale.

Hierarchy, n Dumont'sargument,becomes the essence of caste, the key toits exoticism, and the form of its totality. Therehave been many criticismsof

Dumont'sideas abouthierarchy.I shall be concerned here to deconstructhier-

archyby unpackingtsconstituents n Dumont'sschemeandby tracing hataspectof the genealogy of these constituents that moves us out of India and to other

places in the ongoing journey of anthropological heory. As we shall see, this

genealogyis in parta topographichistoryof certainepisodes and certain inks inthe historyof anthropological houghtin the last century.Since my argument sconcerned argely with the extra-Indianmplicationsof Dumont's ideas, let me

brieflyplacethemin theirIndiancontext.

Arrivingon the scene in the late 1960s, when Americanculturalparticular-ism, British structural-functionalism,nd French structuralismhad come to aratherdull standoff n regard o the studyof caste, HomoHierarchicushada gal-




vanizingeffect. It was widely (and vigorously) reviewed, and it generatednu-

meroussymposia,an armyof exegetes, acolytes, andopponents.Foralmost two

decades it has dominatedFrenchstructuralist tudiesof ruralIndia, formed theintellectual charter of the influential journal Contributions to Indian Sociology,and generatedmuchempiricaland theoreticalactivityboth in Englandand the

UnitedStates. Dumont's ideas have been subjectto careful andsympatheticcrit-

icism by a host of scholars who have pursuedhis Frenchintellectualroots, his

conceptionof ideology, his model of renunciationandpurity,and the fit of his

ideas with Indian facts (see, for example, Berreman1971; Das 1977; Kolenda

1976;Marriott1969;Parry1980;Srinivas1984;Yalman1969).While difficultieshave been seen with almostevery important spectof Du-

mont'smethodologyandclaims, most scholarsworkingon the caste systems ofSouthAsia (eventhemostobdurately mpiricistcriticsof Dumont)will grant hat

Dumont's dea of hierarchy aptures he distance betweenthe value-assumptionsof Indiaandpost-EnlightenmentEurope ike no previouscharacterization.

Thereare thus two trajectorieswithin whichHomo Hierarchicusfits. One is

thetrajectoryhat has to do with thehistoryof Westernvalues. Dumont,as earlyas themid-1970s,had shown his concernwith thedynamicsof individualismand

egalitarianismn theWest. This latterconcernhasintensified ince thepublicationof HomoHierarchicus,andDumont'slatest collectionof essays (Dumont1986)

makes t clearthattheargumentabouthierarchyn Indiawas anepisodein a long-termexercise in the archaeologyof modemWestern deology.

Yet, sinceHomoHierarchicusalso made a bold andsweeping structuralist

argument boutthe ideology of the caste system, it demandsassessmentandcri-

tiquein its areal contextas well. This it has amplyreceived. Whatis now called

for is an effortto bringthese two trajectoriesnto a unifiedcriticaldiscussion, a

discussion n which areal and theoretical ssues arenot invidiouslyseparatedand

ranked.Thisessay is apreliminary ontribution o this sort of unifieddiscussion.

PaulineKolenda(1976) hasshown theambiguities n, andpolysemyof, Du-

mont's use of the wordhierarchy n HomoHierarchicus,andhasprovideda val-uablebasis forextendingourunderstanding f the roots of his idea of hierarchy.Dumontowes a very largepartof his understanding f caste society to Celestin

Bougie, about whomI shall have more to say shortly. Bougle (1971) argued hat

thecastesystemwasaproductof theuniqueconfiguration f threerelationalprop-erties of the castes: separation,hierarchy,and interdependence.Dumont's ad-

vance is to find aprinciple inkingandunderlyingall threeanddevelopinga more

sweepingand abstract onceptionof hierarchy hanBougle's.Theingredientsof thisconceptionof hierarchy,eachof which hasa different

genealogy,are(1) aparticularonceptionof thewhole;(2) aparticular onceptionof theparts; 3) a particular onceptionof theoppositionof pureandimpure;and

(4) a particular ommitment o the ideaof theprofoundlyreligiousbasisof caste

society. I shall considereach of these in turn,startingwith the idea of the whole.

Dumont's dea of the whole is consciouslyderivedfromHegel, to whomhe

attributes he view that the hierarchybetweencastes is a matterof the relationto

a whole. Hegel's Philosophyof History (1902), his most important ontribution



HIERARCHY 43

to GermanOrientalism, s the mainlink betweenDumontand thetradition,goingback to Plato, in which a conceptionof the social or collective whole is the pri-

marysource of values andnorms.3India, in this Hegelianview, ceases to be ashowcasefor rankand stratificationwhich is a commonplaceof foreignnotices

of India fromthe beginningsof the Christianera) andbecomes instead a livingmuseumof that form of social holism thathas been lost to the West. Less con-

scious, butequallydecisive for Dumont's idea of the whole, is the conceptionof

the Ann6esSociologiques, in which certain archaicsocial forms, especially giftandsacrifice,are seen as total social phenomena. AlthoughI shall have more to

say on the topographicgenealogy of Mauss's ideas, it is worthnotingthattheyare the productof a particularFrenchphilologicaltradition hat seeks to link the

Indo-Europeanworld with the world of the primitive.Its topos is the spatiotem-poral andscapeof the vanishedIndo-European eartland ndthe scattered slands

of early ethnography. n Dumont'sconceptualization f hierarchy,Hegelianhol-

ism andMaussian otalizingcome together,and a decisive break s made with the

earlierWesternobsessionwith Indianstratification.The subordination f parts o

the whole is atthe heartof Dumont'sunderstandingf theideologicalbasisof the

systemof castes. This whole ("the systemof castes") is takenby Dumontto be

complete,moreimportanthan ts parts,stable,andideologically self-sustaining.Dumont'sidea of the whole representsone variantof the wideranthropological

commitment o holism, a commitment hat has elsewherebeenopenedto criticalexamination.4

So much forDumont'sconceptionof the "whole." What abouthis concep-tion of theparts?Here the plot gets thicker.Dumont'sunderstanding f castes as

partsof a very particularypeof hierarchicalwhole comes fromtwo sources,both

of which he acknowledges.The first is Evans-Pritchard,whose classic studyof

the segmentary nature of Nuer society influenced Dumont greatly (Dumont

1970:41-42). As Srinivas has recently emphasized,the topographicroots of the

segmentarynatureof Indiancastes comes fromEvans-Pritchard'snalysisof the

Nuer data, a special sort of Africancase (Srinivas 1984). In turn, Evans-Prit-chard'sview has complex, thoughobscure,roots. One aspectof the Nuer modeldoubtlessgoes backto RobertsonSmith's classic work on Semiticreligion,whichcontains a particularEnglish Orientalistpictureof Arabiansociety (Beidelman1968;Dresch, this volume). On the otherhand, the generalroots of the classicBritishsocial anthropologyof Africanpolitical systems surely goes back to the

19th-centuryAnglo-Saxontradition n studiesof ancient law. Especiallycentralhereis the work of HenryMaine, who is a critical theorist of kinshipas a basisforjuralorder.5Since Maine also worked on Indian aw andsociety, in compar-

isonwith ancientRome, we have here a wonderfulcircle. From heancientvillagerepublicsof India, via ancient Rome andcomparative aw, throughAfricanpo-liticalsystemsandNuersegments,back to Indiancastes.

Butthe othersourceof Dumont'sconceptionof thecastes as "parts"is Bou-

gle's imageof the "repulsion"of thecastes towardeachother,a fascinatingGal-lic precursorof Evans-Pritchard's onceptionof the fissive tendencies of Nuer

segments(Bougle 1971:22;Evans-Pritchard 940:148).




It is not easy to tracethe roots of Bougle's emphasison the "repulsion"of

the partsfor each other, except as a syntheticinsightbasedon the ethnography

andIndologyavailableto him at the turn of the century.Since Bougle was not(unlikeMauss)anIndologist,and since he was mainlyconcernedwith thehistoryof egalitarianvalues in theWest, we can only guess that the areal nterestsof his

colleaguesin the Annees Sociologiquegrouphad some effects on him. One such

specificinfluencewe shall note shortly.Before we come to Dumont's critical contribution-the oppositionof pure

and impureas the axiom of the entire caste system-we need to ask about the

largerview on which it is based, namelythatin India, religion is the dominant

shaperof ideologyand values. Although his is somethingof acommonplace,and

has beennotedby centuriesof observers rom theWest, Dumontplaces a specialemphasisandinterpretation ponthereligiousbasisof Indiansociety. One source

for this orientationagain is Hegel. But more proximateare Bouge1,mentioned

already,and A. M. Hocart. As to Bougle, he attributed he hierarchicalHindu

conceptionof castes to the utterpredominance f thepriesthood n India. On the

one hand,thispredominancewas attributedo a weak stateorganizationandhere

we have a parallelto the link thatleads fromHenryMaineto Evans-Pritchard).On theotherhand,Bougle attributes t to thecentralityof the sacrificein ancient

India. This, in turn,Bouge1derives from Hubert and Mauss's classic work on

sacrificeand-you guessed it-Robertson Smithon the Semitic religionof sac-rifice. So we are backin the shadow of Arabia.

But the other crucial sourceof Dumont's ideas about the religiousbasis of

Indian ocietyis the work of theEnglish anthropologist-administrator,. M. Ho-

cart.AlthoughDumont makesmanycriticismsof Hocart's work on caste, he is

explicit in acknowledginghis debt to him on the centralityof religionto caste.

What s interestingaboutHocart's own anthropological areer s thatit beganin

theSouthPacific,where he conductedanthropological esearches n Fiji, Tonga,and Samoa. He was also Headmaster or some time of a native school at Lau

(Fiji), and he wrote a learnedmonographon the Lau Islands. It was this experi-ence of thecentralityof chieftainshipandcastelikespecialization hat was on his

mindwhen, afterWorld WarI, he was appointedArchaeologicalCommissioner

in Ceylon, where he furtherdevelopedhis ideas on caste andkingship. In fact,his entire model of Indiansociety-centered on the ritual of kingship-is based

on his apperception f Ceylon, where theritualof royaltyremaineda macroreal-

ity. Whenhe finallywrotehis comparative tudyof caste inthe 1930s, it reflected

anunderstandingf Indiancaste thatechoed a Ceyloneseredactionof his under-

standingof rank,chieftainship,andreligiousorder n theSouthPacific,especially

in Fiji.An interestingvarianton this genealogy can be seen in Dumont's under-

standingof thecontrastbetweenthepureandthe impure.Dumontacknowledgesthe importantbut mistakenideas of scholars like H. N. C. Stevenson (1954)

(whose work on statusevaluation n the caste system may have been influenced

by his own earlierworkon the Chin-Kachingroupin Burma,whom Leach sub-

sequently mmortalized).But he must have also been greatlyinfluencedby Ho-



HIERARCHY 45

cart, whose comparativework on caste (Hocart 1950) contains an important,

though acit,emphasison theproblemof ritualseparation nd thepurityof chiefs.

AlthoughDumontdoes notexplicitlyattributehispartof his thinking o Hocart,thereis a very interestingsection in Homo Hierarchicus wherehe notes thathis

ideas about food prohibitions n India are owed to an unpublishedcourse on sin

andexpiation aughtby MaussattheCollegede France,where Mausspartlydrew

his ideasfromHocart's workon Tonga(Dumont1970:140). Thus, in the central

matterof food prohibitions,which exemplify the contrastbetweenpureand im-

pure,which is in turn the culturalpivot of Dumont's ideas on hierarchy,the to-

pographicgenealogy leadsback to Hocarton Tonga.Let me conclude with a review of my findings.Dumont'sconceptionof hi-

erarchy eads from India in at least four majortopologicaldirections:Africa, inregard o itsconceptionof theparts;ancientArabia,foritsconceptionof religious

segmentation ndsolidarity;ancientRome, for its conceptionof juralorder n the

absenceof apowerfulstate;and the SouthPacific(via Ceylon), for its conceptionof thepowerof taboo and the ritual mplicationsof specialization.But, of course,there are two other discourses that mediate this one, discourseswhose analysislies outsidethe scope of this essay. One is the metropolitandiscourse of anthro-

pology, conductedat places like Oxford,the College de France,and the various

sites of colonialadministration.Theother s thegranderdiscourseof Orientalism,

whose strengthsandweaknessesarestill with us in the anthropological tudyofIndia(Inden1986a, 1986b).

Hierarchy in Place

It remainsnow to ask, moregenerally,aboutthe circumstancesunderwhich

certainanthropologicalmages-such as hierarchy-become hegemonic in, and

confined o, certainplaces. Thisquestionis inescapablyboth historicaland com-

parative.

Fromthecomparativepointof view, ideasor imagesthatbecomemetonymsfor places in anthropologicaldiscourseappear o share certainproperties.First,forthe nonspecialist hey providea shorthand orsummarizinghe culturalcom-

plexitythathas alreadybeen constitutedby existing ethnography.By extension,

they provide a handy guide for navigating throughnew (or newly discovered)

ethnographieswithoutgettinglost in the minutiaeof the locality. Althoughsome

ethnographiesbecome classics because they arecompelling works of literature,most routineethnographies rofit rom thosesummarizingmetonymsthatprovidea pointof orientation orthenonspecialistreader. Of course, this does nothingto

increasethe likelihood that the nonspecialistis likely to pick up the situationaldiversitiesof these local worlds.

Second, fromthe pointof view of the specialistswho work on a place, cer-tainideas or imagesarelikely to become hegemonicbecausethey capturesome-

thingimportantabout the place thattranscends ntraregionalvariationsandthat

is, at the sametime, problematic,because it is subjectto ethnographicor meth-

odological question.Thus, hierarchy s (at least in some of its Dumontianmean-




ings) undeniably a striking feature of Indian society, but its exact status is pro-

foundly debatable. For the specialist, images like hierarchy acquire their appeal

not because they ease the labors of traveling through the jungles of other people's

ethnographies, but because they are compelling ideas around which to organize

debate, whether such debate is about method, about fact, about assumptions, or

about empirical variations.

Finally, neither of the above properties is quite sufficient to guarantee that a

particularidea (expressed as a term or a phrase) will become hegemonic in regardto the construction of a place. It is also important that the image provide a credible

link between internal realities (and specialist accounts of them) and external

preoccupations (and their larger discursive contexts). The most resilient images

linking places and cultural themes, such as honor-and-shame in the circum-Med-

iterranean, hierarchy in India, ancestor-worship in China, compadrazgo in His-

panic America, and the like, all capture internal realities in terms that serve the

discursive needs of general theory in the metropolis.This hypothesis about the images of place in anthropology needs to be put

into a historical perspective as well. Such hegemonic ideas not only come into

being in specific conjunctures but are also liable to being pushed out of favor byother such ideas. What accounts for such shifts is not easy to talk about in a gen-eral way, or in a brief space, since it involves the gradual accumulation of small

changes in metropolitan theorizing; in local, ethnographically centered debate;

and in the relationship between the human sciences in (and in regard to) particular

places.

Assuming that such topological stereotypes cost us more in terms of the rich-

ness of our understanding of places than they benefit us in rhetorical or compar-ative convenience, how are we to contest their dominance? Here three possibili-ties present themselves. The first, exemplified in this essay, is to remain aware

that ideas that claim to represent the "essences" of particular places reflect the

temporary localization of ideas from many places. The second is to encourage the

production and appreciation of ethnographies that emphasize the diversity of

themes that can fruitfully be pursued in any place.The third, and most difficult possibility, is to develop an approach to theory

in which places could be compared polythetically (Needham 1975). In such an

approach, there would be an assumption of family resemblances between places,

involving overlaps between not one but many characteristics of their ideologies.This assumption would not require places to be encapsulated by single diacritics

(or essences) in order for them to be compared with other places, but would permit

several configurations of resemblance and contrast. Such a polythetic approach to

comparison would discourage us from thinking of places as inhabited by natives,

since multiple chains of family resemblance between places would blur any singleset of cultural boundaries between them. Without such consistent boundaries, the

confinement that lies at the heart of the idea of the native becomes impossible.



HIERARCHY 47

Notes

Acknowledgments.Earlierversions of this article were presentedat the panel on "Place

and Voice in AnthropologicalTheory," at the 85th AnnualMeetingof the AmericanAn-

thropologicalAssociation,Philadelphia,December1986, and at the ResearchColloquiumof the Departmentof Sociology, Universityof Delhi, in January1987. I am gratefulto

colleaguespresenton each of these occasionsfor useful comments andsuggestions.Com-

mentsby Paul Friedrich on severaldrafts)andPaul Dresch(on an earlierdraft) orcedme

to clarify key pointsand eliminatecertainerrors.

'Fora fascinatingaccountof the ironies in the historicalevolution of such terms as native,

inlander,indigenes, etc., in the context of Dutch colonialism in SoutheastAsia, see An-derson(1983:112-128).

2Lest be seen as excessively criticalof the attention hatanthropologistshavepaidto this

poetryof confinement,I should add that some of the ethnography hat best combinesde-

scriptionandtheorizingcapitalizeson the enmeshmentof consciousnessin culturallycon-

stitutedenvironments:Evans-Pritchard n Nuer time-reckoning Evans-Pritchard 940),

IrvingHallowell on Saulteauxmeasurement Hallowell 1942), Steven Feld on Kalulipo-etics (Feld 1982), andFernandezon the imageryof Africanrevitalizationmovements Fer-nandez1986).

3Hegel'sown ideas about Indianreligiosity were greatlyinfluencedby the romanticOri-entalisttreatisesof HerderandSchlegel (see Inden 1986aandSchwab 1984).

4When publishedmy own critiqueof anthropologicalholism, in the context of a critiqueof Dumont's ideas (Appadurai1986b), I had not had the opportunity o see Fernandez

(1986). In this essay, Fernandez s concernedwith the mechanismsthatcreate "the con-

victionof wholeness" in African revitalizationmovements. He is thus able to proposea

moreoptimisticsolutionto the problemof "culturalwholes" thanI was. The time seems

ripefor a full-fledgeddebate aboutthemanydimensionsof theproblemof culturalwholes

andtherelationshipbetween them.

'Evans-Pritchard eems to have been conscious of this debt, and has stated that one ofMaine'smost importantgeneralizationswas that "kinshipand not contiguityis the basisof commonpoliticalaction in primitivesocieties" (Evans-Pritchard 981:87). Of course,Dumontwas also influencedby Maine, butI believe thatin thisregard,the influence wasmediatedby Evans-Pritchard.

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Documents

APPADURAI Putting Hierarchy in Its Place