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Sorry to interject again, but this sums it up nicely: How Class Works in Caste: Trajectory of an Erroneous Discourse from Max Weber to Louis Dumont” by Hira Singh Department of Sociology York University [Paper presented at the Conference, “How Class Works - 2010”, SUNY, Stony Brook, June 3-5, 2010] Abstract Max Weber’s distinction between ‘class’ and ‘status’ remains, to date, a seminal text for the mainstream sociology. For Max Weber, caste represents the ideal type of status, as opposed to class. While Max Weber’s distinction between class and status is marked by inconsistency - both logical and historical (at worst), or ambiguity (at best), the succeeding generations of sociologists and social-cultural anthropologists studying caste have overlooked the inconsistency, and erased the ambiguity, in Weber’s conceptualization of class and status. The common refrain of sociological and anthropological studies of caste is to contrast caste and class. One important, and unfortunate, consequence of this tendency, apart from a distorted view of class and caste, is the notion of ‘Indian exceptionalism’ - the argument that, given the dominance of caste, albeit status, class is irrelevant to the study of Indian society and history. This view is presented most forcefully by Louis Dumont in his famous work, Homohierarchicus. Dumont’s protagonists and detractors alike, numerous as they are, have not seriously examined the flawed – both logically and historically – conceptualization of class-status distinction by Weber, which Dumont accepts uncritically and takes it to another extreme to turn caste inequality into a religious hierarchy and deny caste as a case of social stratification altogether. My paper is a critical examination of Weber’s conceptualization of caste as status and its further distortion by Dumont to show that class and caste are not mutually exclusive. Historically, the dominant caste in India is indeed, the dominant class. The objective of my paper, in the short run, is to argue against ‘Indian exceptionalism’ – an offshoot of orientalism and colonial anthropology. Its objective, in the long run, is to rescue class from Weberian distortion premised on the distinction between class and status. Louis Dumont and the Caste System in India US-Them (India, the other) Louis Dumont believes in studying a society primarily in terms of its dominant ideology. He contrasts Indian ideology with modern Western ideology in order to understand Indian as well as the modern Western society and history. This contrast is a characteristic feature of his entire exercise. In his scheme, India is a typical case of holism and hierarchy, the exact opposite modern Western ideology of equality and individualism. As pointed out by Andre Beteille (2006), Dumont has a taste for symmetry: Homo Hierarchicus vs. Homo Aequqlis; hierarchy vs. equality; holism vs. individualism. This craving for symmetry, Beteille rightly notes, is more than a matter of personal taste. It is characteristic of an intellectual tradition called Orientalism. According to Dumont, Holism entails hierarchy while individualism entails equality. India stays at the extreme end of holistic societies, while France at the time of her Revolution was distinguished by an extreme ideological stress on equality On Sat, Aug 13, 2011 at 8:21 PM, Greg McDonald <gregm...@gmail.com> wrote: > For a more contemporary and ethnographic approach in the Weberian vein > see Louis Dumont: > > http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/obituary-professor-louis-dumont-1189259.html ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
