2015 | Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 5 (1): 113136

SPECIAL SECTION INTRODUCTION

Mister D.
Radical comparison, values,
and ethnographic theory
Andr Iteanu, CNRS/EPHE
Ismal Moya, CNRS, Laboratoire dEthnologie
et de Sociologie Comparative

This article argues that the relevance of Louis Dumonts work for ethnographic theory
today is his radical conception of comparison as an experiment on difference that collapses
anthropological analysis and epistemology. The text applies Dumonts own method
comparisonto his anthropology. In the first part, we follow the trail of Dumonts
ethnographical encounter with the Indian caste system and the radical contrast he drew
with Euro-America to provide an insight into his comparative method and his core notions
(value, hierarchy, encompassment). In the second part, Dumonts anthropological strategy
is put into perspective with two other radical comparative projects: Marilyn Stratherns on
Melanesia and Eduardo Viveiros de Castros on Amazonia.
Keywords: comparison, value, hierarchy, Dumont, Strathern, perspectivism

I dont have any ideas, comparison provides them.

(Dumont 1991: 8)

In a fascinating book, Pierre Hadot (2004) argues that in ancient Greece, philosophy was much more than an intellectual exercise: it was a way of life.1 Those who
practiced philosophy were not isolated individuals responding to one another.
They lived in distinct small communities (the schools) characterized not only by a
1. This special section is a revised version of a larger collection on Louis Dumonts comparative anthropology edited by Ccile Barraud, Andr Iteanu and Ismal Moya, forthcoming in French at CNRS ditions.
 his work is licensed under the Creative Commons
T
| Andr Iteanu and Ismal Moya.
ISSN 2049-1115 (Online). DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.14318/hau5.1.006

Andr Iteanu and Ismal Moya114

peculiar system of thoughts, but by a global conception of life as well, ruled by specific norms, prohibitions, rituals, bodily exercises, and so forth. For an anthropologist, that ways of thinking matched existential choices in ancient Greece is hardly
surprising. It is even a relief to learn that, unlike today, philosophy was not always a
sheer intellectual exercise geared to devise abstract conceptual systems or doctrines
to explain the universe around us.
Likewise, in line with Hadots argument, it may be worth considering that our varied anthropological theories could be associated with contrasted ways of life. At least,
this is the impression that those who knew Louis Dumont had, because his conduct
was often disconcerting. For example, when some student or colleague addressed
him as Professor, he often replied: I am a researcher, not a professor. This answer
was not sheer bashfulness, but a reflection on the nature of anthropology. For him, a
professor was someone certain of the truth of what he or she taught and able to comment on all anthropological currents and their relation to philosophy. In short, a person who uses well-defined concepts and talks like a textbook. By contrast, Dumont
(1977: viii) argues that anthropological research should be equated to the work of a
craftsman who continually re-works ethnographic materials and only reaches provisional results, permanently relativized by the endless richness of social differences.
Dumonts institutional position matched his personal thoughts. He hardly ever
taught a single course. At the cole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, where he
officiated for three decades, nobody did, and allegedly they still do not. The cole has
no professors but only Directeurs dtudes, Directors of studies, in the sense of advisors for those who are developing case studies. Dumont ran a weekly seminar presenting his current research to Ph.D. students and colleagues. He did not speak with ease
and would rather spell out in front of a dozen students a few pages of a book he had
recently encountered or a particular ethnographic point. His presentations were far
less spectacular than those of his brilliant colleagues (Lvi-Strauss, Foucault, Barthes,
Bourdieu, etc.) who ran seminars in Paris during the same years. In Dumonts age,
professors, rather than researchers, were fairly rare in anthropology. Nowadays, as
the institutional situation has changed, they seem to be the overwhelming majority.
What kind of theory, in Hadots terms, would match Dumonts way of life?
To answer this question we would need to vet over five decades of anthropological literature which have commented on and criticized abstract notions held
as Dumontian, such as holism, totality, encompassment, hierarchy, value or
ideology,2 to realize that we could add very little.3 However, the purpose of this
2. Dumonts legacy in contemporary anthropology has expanded to other regions of the
world. Since the 1980s, most writings engaging with Dumonts orientations have come
from scholars working in the Pacific and Southeast Asia (Barraud, de Coppet, Damon,
Eriksen, Howell, Iteanu, Mosko, Platenkamp, Robbins, Rio, Tcherkzoff, etc.).
3. Giving a review of Dumonts work would be redundant since Robert Parkins Louis
Dumont and hierarchical opposition (2003) has already accomplished this task. That
book offers both a general history of Dumonts work and a comprehensive and heuristic presentation of his core ideas, their origins (Hertz, Needham, etc.), and their
reception (debates, critics, and followers). Andr Celtels Categories of the self (2004)
discusses Dumonts conceptions of individualism. More recently, Knut Rio and
Olaf Smedals Hierarchy: Persistence and transformation in social formations (2009a)

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Mister D.

special section is to highlight that Dumonts principal intellectual legacy and his
main achievement lie less in a theory or a set of concepts and much more in his
comparative practice, which he considered the source of all anthropological intuitions. Therefore this introduction aims to unfold Dumonts radical conception of
comparison, an issue largely neglected by his critics and commentators and immediately relevant to the contributions assembled in this section.

Dumonts comparative project

Louis Dumont was primarily known as a specialist of India and more precisely of
the caste system. The contrast he drew between India and Euro-America (Dumont
1980) fueled the anthropological conversation for several decades, especially since
the early 1960s. Almost every aspect of his views on India has been vividly debated and challenged by numerous authors (e.g., Marriott 1969, 1976; Leach 1971;
Richards and Nicholas 1976; Parry 1979, 1998; Madan 1982; Appadurai 1986, 1988;
Bteille 1986; Dirks 1993; Needham 1987; Raheja 1988). He answered some of these
critics, particularly those who raised issues concerning caste hierarchy (Dumont
1971, 1980: xixlix) and Dravidian kinship (Dumont 1983: 14571). Yet a misconception still circulates today among many anthropologists, triggered by poor
textbooks, of Dumont as the thinker of a grand narrative that reifies the distinction
between India and the West, ignores colonialism, and justifies social inequalities.
On the contrary, Dumonts comparison does not aim to intensify the differences
that distinguish social formations or civilizations, but repeatedly diminishes the
contrasts around which comparison revolves.
In the second half of his life, Dumont moved away from his work on India and
strove to understand Euro-American societies and the various facets of the totalitarian
regimes they produced during the twentieth century. His work dealt with economic
ideology (1977), individualism (1986), and German ideology (1994). Until the end of
his life, Dumont never lost touch with the new questions anthropology was confronting. His last two published pieces of work were critiques of the colonial situation in
New Caledonia and of the ecological disaster created by the drying of the Aral Sea.
On comparison, as on everything he considered essential, Dumont never produced a methodological text or a systematic formalization since he never ceased
to redefine the conceptual repertoire he employed and to refine his analysis and
methods. In each new edition of of his books, he added extra chapters, paragraphs,
forewords, postscripts, personal commentaries, and notes. Each published work
presented Dumonts analytical framework and its criticsand confronted it with ethnographies from Oceania, Asia, or the Middle East. Joel Robbins has also reassessed,
from an American (cultural) and Weberian point of view, Dumonts legacy as a theorist
of contemporary processes of cultural interaction and transformation (Robbins 2009;
Robbins and Siikala 2014). Vincent Descombes recently translated The institutions of
meaning (2014), starting with the problems raised by the philosophical notion of intentionality, gives a sterling defense of Dumonts anthropological holism, drawing on
Wittgenstein and Peirce. This book also teases out most of the conceptual muddles
regarding Dumonts holism.

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was a step in a research process. What he feared most is that his conceptual framework would become an autopoietic system which might prevent him exploring
new conceptual domains. His doubts never left him, and in the final pages of his
last book, German ideology (1994), he claimed that the opposition between individualism and holism, which was his big scientific achievement, did not properly
fit the German case (ibid.: 194) and therefore was only a heuristic device fit for
certain comparative contexts.
Comparison was for Dumont the sole heuristic capable of generating anthropological knowledge. For this reason, he didnt regard his findings as personal
achievements, but saw them as the products of his comparative experiments. We
wish to argue that the relevance of Dumont for ethnographic theory (da Col and
Graeber 2011) today can be acknowledged from the standpoint of his comparative
perspective and by reflexively applying to it its own method, comparison. We shall
thus follow the trail of his ethnographical encounter with India and then compare
his perspective with two other radical comparative projects: Marilyn Stratherns on
Melanesia and Eduardo Viveiros de Castros on Amazonia.4

A man without ideas: The comparative experiment

Dumonts anthropology did not unfold from a philosophical standpoint, but from
ethnographic circumstances: in ancient India, the Brahmans, the priests, were considered superior to the Kings. This superiority was expressed in terms of the relative purity of their castes, that is, in terms of a religious value. It was visible in many
ways. Above all, the Brahmans were vegetarians, which made them purer than the
carnivorous Kings. However, this subordination did not affect the political power
of the latter, who reigned over everyone. This situation triggered Dumonts curiosity. How could we make sense of the fact that political power was not paramount
in ancient India?
To answer this question, Homo hierarchicus (1980) argues that in India, the value of purity was more crucial than political power. Therefore, the Brahmans were
superior to the Kings not because they were more powerful, but because they
were born in castes endowed with the highest purity and status. This social reality
conformed to a general principle as all castes are hierarchically ordered according
to their relative purity. Since Brahmans are superior to Kings, Dumont concluded
that in India caste hierarchy ranked according to purity is distinguished from and
more valued than the political power of the Kings that it encompasses.
4. Our aim is not to scrutinize the relevance Dumonts ethnography and analysis of India
but to explain and clarify his practice of comparison. Although Bruce Kapferer, in his
Legends of people, myths of state (1988), does not entirely support Dumonts argument,
he strongly assessed that most dimensions of his Southern Indian analysis apply also
to Sri Lanka, and most particularly the notions of totality and the subordination of political power to hierarchy (ibid.: 9). In this introduction, we touch upon these themes
only lightly. Following the release of Legends of people, myths of state, Dumont reported
(pers. comm.) that he was very impressed by the sharpness of Kapferers analysis and
understanding of his work (see also Kapferer 2010).

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Mister D.

However, Dumont did not consider the caste system as an empirical reality. In
most rural areas only a few castes are present and nowhere in India could one find
something like a complete set comprised of all the castes. The caste system was
not even an explicit and articulated conception as no Indian regards castes as a
coherent string of groups clearly ordered along a line of relative purity. However,
the caste system manifests itself in that Indians commonly hierarchize things, people, institutions, and so forth, in terms of their relative purity. Dumont (1980: 34)
accordingly stated that, far more than a group in the ordinary sense, the caste
is a state of mind which is expressed by the emergence, in various situations, of
groups of various orders generally called castes. Consequently, a single caste is
not an independent social reality. It cannot be understood in itself, but only in
relation to other castes which are locally superior or inferior. The minimal unity is
therefore not the caste as a basic unit, but a series, ordered in a hierarchy. Dumont
generalized this conclusion by stating that a whole cannot be constructed by adding
elements. On the contrary, each element must be evaluated in relation to its belonging whole. In other words, to understand the caste system, one needs to adopt the
perspective of the whole, in which certain fixed principles govern the arrangement
of fluid and fluctuating elements (ibid.).
This initial comparison was only the starting point of Dumonts work. Comparison is radical, according to him, because it is an experiment that brings into play
anthropologists own ideas (Dumont 1986: 6).5 Dumont struggled to understand
the superiority of the Brahman over the King, precisely because this fact elicited
a difference with the idea and practices of his cultural milieu. Compared to India,
where hierarchy appeared as unmixed with power, in Euro-America power and
hierarchy seemed inseparably mingled. This is, for example, the case all through
Euro-America when hierarchical relations are construed as domination. This
state of mind was particularly acute, Dumont noted, in the Marxist trends that
led French social sciences at the end of the 1960s, mostly under the influence of
Althusser, Foucault, and Bourdieu. These authors, according to Dumont, treated
the compound made by power and hierarchy as the natural force underlying every
social phenomenon. In contrast, for Dumont, the mingling of hierarchy and power
was not an objective universal reality, but, seen from India, looked to be a most
particular Euro-American idea.
5. Dumont was a student of Marcel Mauss and took much of his inspiration from his work
(with the exception of hierarchy). According to Dumont, Mauss commitment to ethnographic knowledge enabled anthropology to reach its experimental stage. Dumont
(1986: 2) construed the concept of total social fact as a specific complex of a particular society (or type of society), which cannot be made to coincide with any other. In
other words, it implies firstly a stress on difference: facts reacts to the categories, theories, and implicit ideas with which we approach them. It is a comparative experiment
that involves the subject in the object (ibid.: 199). And, secondly, the total aspect of
the fact means that the aim is not to study discrete elements but to compare wholes.
How is this [i.e., the whole] to be found? In a sense society is the only whole, but it is
so complex that however scrupulously we reconstruct it, there is doubt about the result.
But there are cases [i.e., total social facts] where consistency is found in less extended
complexes, where the whole can be more easily kept within view (ibid.: 194).

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Furthermore, since in India power appeared as limited by caste hierarchy,

Dumont mused on whether in Euro-America power was actually as powerful as
commonly imagined. This is why in his later work on Western ideology (1977,
1986, 1994), he attempted to understand the limits of power: that is, the constraints
that more or less invisibly weigh on political power. One obvious such limitation
is constituted by the economy. Following Karl Polanyis demonstration of the disembedding of the market economy from society in the nineteenth century (Polanyi
1944), Dumont captured in From Mandeville to Marx (1977) the way in which the
economy has gained primacy in Euro-American thought. As Ismal Moya remarks
in his contribution to this special section, one of Dumonts conclusions was that the
economy does not refer to any objective domain of social life: it is a construct and
not a crosscultural category, contra Polanyis (1957) idea of a universal substantive
economy. According to Dumont, since economics emerged from politics in EuroAmerica, the two cannot be understood independently from one another. Their
reality is only constituted by their relation. However, the autonomy and the claim
to primacy of the economic dimension impinges on the political and challenges its
power (Dumont 1986: 10412).
Dumonts comparative work on India elicited two radically opposed stances on
sociality: the Indian social formation manifests the idea that hierarchy is an utmost
value that encompasses political power, while Euro-American social life is molded
by the contention that power is universal and the source of all hierarchy. Indeed,
Dumont thought that anthropology was not to decide which of these alternatives
was more objective. As both of them were idiosyncratic ideas, he called them
values from a comparative perspective. Thus, Dumonts notion of value is distinct
from the economic notions of value and those of moral obligation and subjective
judgment informed by a notion of the good and the desirable. This distinction is
crucial and is why Dumonts anthropology of value has very little to do with the
recent anthropological current loosely called the ethical turn6 or David Graebers
theory of value (2001),7 although both of them consider that their main concern is
the comparative appraisal of values.8
Dumonts values are neither objective nor subjective facts, but only differences
that appear through comparison. Consequently, it is futile to attempt to specify whether they are descriptive notions or artifacts (i.e., the products of a comparative experiment). They overcome the distinction between symbolic and real,
6. The anthropology of morality and ethics (e.g., Laidlaw 2002; Robbins 2007; Lambek
2010; Fassin 2012) draws on two meanings of the idea of value: (1) values as a given set
of norms (a moral order), somehow exterior to individuals, that determines what they
are supposed to do or not to do, what is good or bad; and (2) conceptions of the good
that stem from the reflexive work of individuals as ethical subjects.
7. David Graeber critically engaged several times with Dumonts ideas on value (e.g. 2001:
1620, 2013: 23536) without, in our opinion, taking into account in his criticisms the
experimental and (radical) comparative aspects of the Dumontian perspective.
8. The anthropology of value, as it were, is actually a much larger and more heterogeneous field. See, for example, the diversity of anthropological perspectives on the question of value in the fifteen contributions in Haus special issue on Value as theory
edited by Ton Otto and and Rane Willerslev (Otto and Willerslev, 2013a, 2013b).

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representation and reality, action and thought, facts and values. Therefore, values
never built up into an overarching standpoint, such, for example, as that afforded
by power, from which one could embrace equally all social formations and picture all hierarchical relations as forms of domination. His radical perspective led
Dumont to dispense with all conventional anthropological themes like ritual, religion, or ontology and to consider that values only emerge from comparative experiment. Hence his formula: I dont have any ideas, comparison provides them
(Dumont 1991: 8).
Nevertheless, let us pause for a moment and focus on Dumonts assertion, counterintuitive as it is for all those who have gone through an Euro-American style of
schooling in which scientific knowledge requires a precise and stable definition of
the conceptual apparatus. When ideas develop from comparison only, the concepts
deployed are bound to vary in time to express whatever gradually emerges from the
contrast. The distinction between power and hierarchy illustrates this movement.
The comparison between India and Euro-America led Dumont to disentangle
these two notions to propose an intelligible contrast. However, in the two cases,
the notions of power and hierarchy are not identical, precisely because in each case
their relation is different. However, in both cases, the relation (between power and
hierarchy) defines their meaning. In Dumonts view, in this case, the term value
designate synthetically both the relation and the terms elicited by a comparison.9
From such an epistemological position, each value description (i.e., each difference elicited by comparison) is only an analytical starting point and never accounts
for the whole. Thus, value descriptions inevitably leave blank spots unaccounted
for. This is partially why the perception of a particular value changes when observed from a different perspective. For example, on the one hand, Dumonts
comparison contrasts hierarchy in India with power in Euro-America, but, on the
other, he states that purity (and not power) orders the caste system. That purity and
hierarchy are different points of view on the same difference (i.e., the same value)
ensues from the fact that although these terms describe comparative wholes, our
appraisal of them is irremediably limited. Analysis must unfold from the relative
whole to its parts. In other words, the wider contrast between two social formations constitutes the starting point. Dumont (1980: 212) confessed that he made
a bet when he first decided to center his analysis on the distinction between hierarchy and political power, as he was not sure that it would work. The difference
always appears at the beginning to be very radical: intensified to a point where it
seems in many ways unrealistic. However, progressively, further analysis refines
and relativizes this initial difference by drawing on contradictions since, according
to Dumont, a value can be never homogeneously dominant. In certain domains,
for certain people, each value may be subordinated to other values, which in turn

9. Dumont (1986: 235) also explained that he developed the idea of value reluctantly as
his next conceptual bid after trying to sell to the profession the idea of hierarchy,
with little success. He defined hierarchy as the order resulting from the consideration
of value (ibid.: 279). In other words, what matters for Dumont is not a single value or a
set of values but a configuration in which values are hierarchized compared to another
configuration.

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can be more locally subordinated to others.10 For example, hierarchy distinguishes

India from Euro-America, but is by no means coextensive with it and does not
account for every aspect of Indian society. On the contrary, for Dumont, Indian
hierarchy leaves space to the power of Kings that it only encompasses (Dumont
1980: 15283). Likewise, caste hierarchy is contradicted by the extreme individualistic stand of the renouncer (ibid.: 18487), a mystic who steps outside his caste to
invent or adopt a discipline of salvation. In other words, the renouncer relativizes
the caste system by being an individual-outside-the-world.
As the Indian example shows, a value can never be dominant in all the domains
of social life, but conversely values are not globally devalued by the fact that they
are at times subordinated or contested. Thus, contrary to what happens when the
relation between two values is a matter of choice (or preference), the hierarchical superiority of one value over another does not rule out that inferior value. In
encompassment, even when they contradict superior values, inferior values are
included in the configuration at subordinated positions. The recognition of logical contradictions is therefore integral to Dumonts notion of hierarchy (Dumont
1980; Houseman 1984). However, these logical contradictions may not be experienced as such by the members of the cultures considered when, as a function of
their context, the diverse alternatives they confront are referred to different values.
Consonant with his notion of values, Dumonts comparison is a process that
relativizes layer by layer the massive contrast initially established. For example, as
stated previously, in India, he first deconstructed his own notion of power by distinguishing power from hierarchy. Then, turning back to Euro-America, he tested
the distinction only to find that political power was here associated with equality. Back again to India, a new distinction emerged. Whereas in India hierarchy
encompasses political power, in Euro-America the relation of power to equality
is an exclusive contradistinction. This last formulation accounts for an idea widely spread in Euro-America and also among Marxists, according to which power
is consubstantial to hierarchy and absolutely opposed to equality: it is either one
or the other. Or to put it otherwise, if power was somehow to disappear, equality would be achieved. This third layer of comparison allowed Dumont to reach a
more abstract distinction, that between hierarchical encompassment and exclusive
opposition, which may be deconstructed again by other ethnographic examples.
In sum, as stated earlier, Dumonts comparative method only produces provisional
results. Repeated reconsiderations sharpen the image fashioned, but never reach
a stabilized position, let alone perfection. Each result is nothing but the starting
point of a further step that refines, reformulates, and displaces the difference between the two comparative poles that one decided to contrast.
This practice of anthropology does not incite the development of new concepts,
but only draws on old and common categories to elicit, through comparison, differences within them. At first, the radical contrast between two social formations
is approached by using the common notions (political power, hierarchy, etc.) of the
10. See, for example, Dumont (1970), where he shows that in India, the higher castes revere
the higher gods while the lower castes revere the lower gods (the black god) as their
dominant gods. Thus the relative value of the gods does not apply evenly to all castes.
For the different forms of hierarchical inversions, see Tcherkezoff (1987).

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anthropologists language. This contrast is then further refined via a juxtaposition

with facts pertaining to other familiar categories, and so forth. As a consequence,
the notions used by Dumont fall short of being well-defined concepts. Instead,
their meaning fluctuates with every new finding obtained through analysis. Momentarily, comparative results may be generalized and formalized, as, for example,
when Dumont (1980: 23945) developed the idea of hierarchy as encompassing
of the contrary.11 This gives rise to theory as a byproduct of comparison. However,
when one aspires to stabilize this theory, the very possibility of comparison may be
jeopardized.

Dame M. and Mister D.

Over the last twenty years, postmodernist, neo-Marxist, Foucauldian, and Bourdieuan approaches, among others, occupied most disciplinary debates. Some proponents of these theories deemed Dumonts ideas unacceptable, sometimes even
evil, mostly because they relativized political power and therefore seem to support
all kinds of domination-ism: capitalism, orientalism, colonialism, essentialism,
and so on. Engaging with them (e.g. Appadurai 1986, 1988) would thus inevitably
turn into an endless round of hermeneutic quarrels.12
However, a series of anthropological approaches have also come to the forefront
of the discipline and they reveal a set of germane elements to Dumonts thought.
What singles them out is the accusation they share, that is, that an epistemological
(Great) Divide has been generated between the West and the rest. The closest and
most systematic intellectual enterprise of this kind is Marilyn Stratherns relational
anthropology.13 Like Dumont, Strathern has also been widely criticized for not acknowledging the relationships of power and inequality, particularly with regard to
gender and historical relationships between Melanesia and the West (Street and
Copeman 2014: 8).
In our reading, Stratherns conceptual premises resemble those of Dumont to
a certain point, after which their thought takes a diametrically opposed direction.
Both authors wrote extensively on a wide range of subjects and have modified some
of their ideas over the years. To render our comparison more telling, we have narrowed its focus to Stratherns work on Melanesia and Dumonts on India. These two
11. This is developed in Michael Housemans account of The hierarchical relation
in this issue.
12. Knut Rio and Olaf Smeldal (2009b: 1215) addressed these issues.
13. Marilyn Strathern never engaged with Dumonts ideas. However, she constantly acknowledged her debt to Roy Wagners The invention of culture (1975). The latter was
influenced by Dumont, at least when he built up the distinction between modern
American society and older civilizations. Les obvious is the inadvertent similarity
between Dumonts homo hierarchicus/homo aequalis contrast and the pointed comparisons I make between relativized modern American society and the dialectically
balanced social orders of older civilizations (ibid.: 8). Eduardo Viveiros de Castro,
whose ideas on comparison are discussed later on, has also been deeply influenced by
Wagner.

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thinkers theoretical apparatuses are very articulate and nuanced, yet the comparison that follows radicalizes their contrast in order to make it explicit.
To begin with, Dumont and Strathern elicit differences between the social formation they study and Euro-America. To do so, they both problematize the opposition between the individual and society (Dumont 1980: 419; Strathern 1988:
1115). For Strathern, exchanges and, more broadly, social life as it is practiced
in Melanesia are incompatible with the Euro-American notion of the individual.
This is so because in Melanesia the agent is not a closed totality, but a dividual14
person formed out of relations. In Stratherns words, persons are frequently constructed as the plural and composite site of the relationships that produced them
(ibid.: 13). Dumont makes a similar contention when he deconstructs the EuroAmerican notion of the individual by separating two of its meanings (an abstention, in Holbraad and Pedersens terms: 2009: 379): the empirical agent and the
normative concept (Dumont 1980: 9). Like Marilyn Strathern, Dumont conceives
the Euro-American normative individual as an indivisible element. In parallel with
Strathern, Dumont (1965: 91) argues that in India the individual in the normative
sense does not exist because
the smallest ontological unit (or normative agent) is that in which order
(or hierarchy) is still present, i.e. a pair of higher and lower empirical
agents, complementary to each other in a particular situation. This
consideration (of the smallest unit, thus comparable to an individual) is
not essential in itself, but it may be useful for our understanding of the
system.

This Indian multiple conception of the person echoes the consubstantiality between exchange partners that Strathern evidences in Melanesia.
However, from this point on, the two authors bifurcate. Dumont is not terribly
interested in the Indian person qua agent. When forced to encounter the topic,
Dumont defines it (see above) in the light of the Indian hierarchical system, which
is his main concern. Since caste hierarchy characterizes India, the relation between
two persons is the minimal unit in which a relation can be manifested. Strathern,
on the contrary, makes no hypothesis as to why the Melanesian person is dividual.
Her only concern is to draw the systematic consequences of this fact. In short, to
paraphrase Viveiros de Castro (2004: 7), Stratherns crucial inquiry is: What would
a world which has such a definition of the person look like?
In a second move, turning his back to India, Dumont noted that Euro-Americans
and Indians tend to conceive differently the social configuration they live in.
Indians refer to it in the guise of a hierarchized caste system, while Euro-Americans
describe it as a set of individuals. Dumonts contention is that the former vision
refers to an integrated whole while the latter posits a collection of elements. On
the contrary, Strathern (1988: 13) asserts that Euro-Americans define society as a
whole that mirrors their totalized idea of the individual, conceptually distinct from
14. On this point Marilyn Strathern explicitly follows McKim Mariott (1976), who coined
the term about India in his critique of Dumont. Nevertheless, according to us, this academic irony has eclipsed how close Stratherns and Dumonts orientations actually are
(see also Kapferer 2010: 224).

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the relations that brings them together. In sum, both agree that Euro-Americans
conceive society as a collection of individuals linked by relations external to them.
However, their interpretation of such a common conclusion differs. For Dumont,
the Euro-American conception of society refers to a collection of individuals; for
Strathern, it invokes a totality. That the English imagined themselves living between different orders or levels of phenomena, in an incommensurate world of
parts and wholes, both created and was itself a precipitate of the manner in which
they handled perspective (Strathern 1992: 87). The contrast is quite striking as
Strathern invokes here several notions that Dumont would only use to describe
India: orders or levels, incommensurability, parts and wholes. In other words, for
Strathern (1988: 1216), since Melanesia has no individuals, there can be no society in the Euro-American sense of the term. Dumonts position is symmetrically
opposed: since Euro-America has individuals, it can have no totality in the Indian
hierarchical sense.
From there on, the two authors face quite different problems. Since, for Dumont,
India is an integrated hierarchized whole, he can extract the relative value of each
element he studies from the ethnography. In sum, in this context, as we have seen,
the value of things, that is, their relative position to other things, is included
in them. In his seminal study of South Indian Dravidian kinship terminology,
Dumont (1953) showed that affinity and consanguinity were treated equally, in
contrast to Euro-American kinship systems, where affinity is only present at one
generation and then transforms into consanguinity at the next. However, as Ccile
Barraud remarks in her contribution to this section, the equality in question here
is not that associated with the individual in Euro-America, but a form of equality
encompassed in the caste system and thus subordinated to hierarchy. In Dumonts
terms, South Indian kinship presents us with a contrast . . . something like an
island of equality in an ocean of caste (Dumont 1983: 167). In this example, as
everywhere else, Dumont does not face the same problems of scaling as Strathern,
because his analysis operates at once as a twofold movement: comparing India and
Euro-America and contextualizing each value within the whole to which it belongs.
A clarification is, however, in order: Strathern ([1991] 2004) stated on several occasions that notions of parts and whole are a heuristic and do not represent Melanesian sociality. Rather, her goal is to keep her analysis in between the two poles.
Cogently, she dispenses locating the Melanesian relations she engages with (e.g.,
same-sex and cross-sex) within a global social context. However, this strategy confronts her repeatedly with a problem of scaling that could be formulated as follows:
under which condition(s) can one compare elements pertaining to different societies and selected from an external point of view? To answer this question, Strathern
(ibid.)following Wagner (1991)resorts to the fractal paradigm, which posits
that each level of certain objects replicates all the others levels in terms of complexity, irrespective of scale. She thus gains tremendous freedom to compare any
two elements, which confrontation produces interesting results. Her work thus expands comparisons possibilities considerably and elicits unexpected analogies: an
imaginative device through which to think about connections if we could dispense
with its attendant presumption of integration taking place within a single entity
(Strathern [1991] 2004: 25). The limit of her method is that the comparative endeavors she produces never add up, but remain pure liberating experiences. By contrast,
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Andr Iteanu and Ismal Moya124

although Dumont never foresaw any conclusive result to anthropology, he expected

comparisons to cumulate toward a better understanding of social life, irrespective of
all the unpleasant and even immoral revelations that could emerge from it.
Instead of building up a global unity, Strathern tackles recursively along multiple comparative axes the distinction between Melanesia and Euro-America: gender
(i.e., anthropology and feminism), persons and things (i.e., gift and commodities),
ownership, reproduction, kinship, and so forth. Each axis intensifies a difference
by pushing it to its limit.
The differences that plural comparisons measure between things now
emerge as constitutive of those very same things, and can therefore best
be thought of as residing within them. This ... implies also that the
plural distinction between things and the scales that measure them also
collapses into itself... . So comparisons are things that act as their own
scalesthings that scale and thus compare themselves. (Holbraad and
Pedersen, 2009: 375)

Dumont also resorts to a recursive comparative strategy, but places it in a different

framework. We illustrated how Dumont initially established a radical contrast between India and Euro-America. Afterwards, contrary to Stratherns intensification,
he recursively relativized this contrast by concentrating on encompassed values.
This procedure produces successive purposely unimaginative revolutions, in that
each stage partially contradicts the previous one. It also creates totalities: the values
initially drawn from comparison become wholes when set in relation to subordinated values. Here again, the unity is neither in the part nor in the whole, but in the
hierarchical relation that binds them.
This contrast between the two authors is also manifested in their style. Strathern
produces many dazzling images, concepts, displacements, and so forth, whereas
Dumont always sticks to ordinary language. As his terminology never perfectly fitted his purpose, he often slides from one problematic metaphor to another (value,
hierarchy, wholes, etc.) and thus generates a feeling of inaccuracy.
Strathern and Dumont anchor their anthropological practices on comparative
differences and achieve a deconstruction of Euro-American theories of knowledge. Both also collapse the distinction between epistemology and comparison.
For Strathern, Euro-American knowledge production is held hostage by parts and
wholes discourses. Thus, Euro-American anthropologists, no matter what they do,
cannot escape the creation of merographic connections. At best, they can adopt a
circumventing strategy by rendering visible their analytical process. As exemplified
in Stratherns work, this produces imaginative and aesthetic results (Strathern 1992).
In contrast, for Dumont, Euro-American equality, compared to Indian hierarchy, elicits individuals conceived as wholes and social formations as sets of individuals. True to his relativizing method, Dumont subsequently attempted to discover in Euro-America whether the individual as a value was contradicted by other
values. A first reading of some major political philosophy texts (Hobbes, Locke,
Mandeville, Marx, Rousseau, Smith, etc.) appeared to show that this was untrue
and that the individual claimed to spread a homogeneous shadow over every sector
of the ideology. However, further investigation revealed a more nuanced configuration in which the overarching individual was perpetually and irremediably haunted
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Mister D.

by its opposite (Dumont 1986: 17). According to Dumont, these non individualistic aspects may: (1) manifest the survival of traditional practices and institutions
such as the family or gender inequality; (2) result from the application of the very
individualistic principle, such as the limitation of economic liberalism by governments; or (3) be the outcome of the interaction between cultures (Dumont 1994:
810).
Dumont thus concluded that in Euro-America, when values contradict the superior individual, they are not encompassed by it. They are present but implicit
in the midst of equality. His contention is therefore that, in Euro-America, these
hidden values opposed to liberty and equality do not manifest mischievous intentions. They are a structural feature that at time evolves into an intensified form,
totalitarianism (Dumont 1977: 1214, 1986: 14979). This is the most striking and
dramatic conclusion of Dumonts comparative practice.
Finally, as is well known, where anthropology conventionally pictures Melanesian social configurations as fluid, plural, and devoid of centralized authorityall
qualities also associated with Stratherns workthe caste system is linked to hierarchical and pervasive structures, generating contradictions, all attributes lumped in
with Dumonts orientation. In other words, Stratherns and Dumonts anthropologies reveal the differences between Melanesia and India, thus blurring the distinction between the methods and the social formation studied.
Our contrast therefore falls short of being conclusive. To refine and relativize it,
we require a third point of view on radical comparison, that of Eduardo Viveiros de
Castros perspectivism, which inspired by extension the broader current that now
goes by the name of the ontological turn.15

Dumont, dervishes, and others

Viveiros de Castro (1998: 469) once defined perspectivism as the conception according to which the world is inhabited by different sorts of subjects or persons,
human and nonhuman, which apprehend reality from distinct points of view. In
perspectivism as in Stratherns anthropology, a particular form of personhood
plays a central role. Unlike Strathern and Dumont, Viveiros de Castro make use
of the Western notion of the person as it is, only inverting the characteristics associated with each of its elements (soul and body) and expanding its points of application: Individuals of the same species see each other (and each other only)
as humans see themselves, endowed with human figures and habits, seeing their
bodily and behavioral aspects in the form of human culture (Viveiros de Castro
2004: 6). Consequently, where our modern, anthropological multiculturalist ontology is founded on the mutual implication of the unity of nature and the plurality
15. The allusions to the ontological turn are very limited because it is a very diverse current
and a more complete consideration of it would have rapidly exceeded the ambition of
this introduction. For a definition of the ontological turn and of three different ethnographic strategies within it, see Salmond (2014: 16068). We mostly discuss here the
work of Viveiros de Castro and the people inspired by his perspectivist thinking (e.g.,
Holbraad, Pedersen, and Viveiros de Castro 2014).

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Andr Iteanu and Ismal Moya126

of cultures, the Amerindian conception would suppose a spiritual unity and a

corporeal diversityor, in other words, one culture, multiple natures (ibid.). In
short, Euro-American nature is given and unique while culture is constructed and
multiple, and Amerindian nature is multiple and constructed while culture is given
and unique. Viveiros de Castro thus preserves several Euro-American conceptual
oppositions (e.g., nature and culture, body and soul) but makes them whirl, while
the distinction between reality and representation is collapsed. In our view, this
might be called a dervish move.
According to Viveiros de Castro, Amazonians scrutinize multiple juxtaposed
worlds (e.g., jaguars or peccaries). As anthropologists do, they strivewith the
help of shamans who act as mediators and translators of worldsto understand
what their rules are. The author thus considers that the world of anthropology
stands in a relation of continuity to the Indian multiworlded reality. In effect, anthropology, like indigenous perspectivism, is a theory of the equivocation, that is,
of the referential alterity between homonymic concepts. Equivocation appears thus
as the mode of communication par excellence between different perspectival positionsand therefore as both condition of possibility and limit of the anthropological enterprise (ibid.: 5).
Notably, Viveiros de Castro has acknowledged Dumonts work more than Stratherns. In a seminal article on Amazonian kinship, Viveiros de Castro (2001) explicitly
draws on Dumonts idea of Dravidian kinship (Dumont 1983) and develops the idea
that affinity as a value is paramount in Amazonia. While agreeing with Dumont
(contra Needham) that all classificatory relations carry a value asymmetry, Viveiros
de Castro parts from him when it comes to conceptions of totality.16 For Viveiros de
Castro (2001: 28), any notion of totality should not be rejected indistinctly:
I am not suggesting that we should shun any notions of totality, as if
these were wickedly un-Amazonian, just that we be wary of a fallacy of
misplaced wholeness. Any cosmology is by definition total in the sense
that it cannot but think everything that is, and think it according to a
limited number of fundamental presuppositions: holistic approaches are
thus amply justified. But from this it does not follow that every cosmology
thinks everything that is under the category of totalitythat it poses a
totality as the objective correlative of its own virtual exhaustiveness.
Accordingly, I venture to suggest that in Amazonian cosmologies the
whole is not (the) given, and it is not the sum of the given and the
constructed either. The whole is, rather, the constructed, that which
humans strive to bring forth by means of a reduction of the Given as the
anti-whole or pure universal relation (difference).

In sum, Viveiros de Castro applies to hierarchy the same dervish move that he previously made with the opposition between nature and culture: he retains the parts
16. Dumonts contention is based on structuralism: practices and classifications in any social formation are imbued with values. One cannot oppose any couple of categories,
or move from one to the other, without attributing them unequal value. Dumont reassessed Lvi-Strauss idea of structure, but adds value to it, thus transforming it into a
hierarchy (a configuration of values). Hence, according to Robert Parkin (2003), the
fact that Dumont is more concerned with praxis and agency than Lvi-Strauss.

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Mister D.

and the whole distinction, but the latter is constituted by the nature constructed in
Amazonian fashion.
In opposition to Dumont, the notion of totality that Viveiros de Castro advocates does not generate hierarchical relations. The categories he inverts are placed
at the same level, structurally speaking: one category does not encompass the other
and, as he states, there is no whole to incorporate them all. As a consequence, the
reversals that Viveiros de Castro performs in his comparative practice do no generate asymmetric relations but equivalent inversions. According to us, this absence
of hierarchy renders these ontological configurations elicited by Viveiros de Castro
comparable to a Lvi-Straussian mythology (Viveiros de Castro 2008). In her
contribution to this section, Aparecida Vilaa comments on Viveiros de Castros
appropriation of Dumont and also notes that in Amazonia, the coexistence of values produces no moral conflicts but rather a dualism in perpetual (or dynamic)
disequilibrium, for example between compatriot and enemy or consanguine and
affine oppositions (Viveiros de Castro 2001: 30). In the perspectivist model, if categories have any value, it stands outside of them. Thus Viveiros de Castro can replicate (recursively) the same operation of inversion (e.g., Viveiros de Castro 2001,
2009) in a move that we see as a conceptual whirl.
In sum, while Viveiros de Castro (and other ontological turnees such as Martin
Holbraad and Morten Pedersen) radicalizes comparison, it strikingly differs from
Dumont and Stratherns method. Firstly, Viveiros de Castro deals with ontologically
framed questions, which, as Laidlaw (2012) remarked, necessarily rely on a radical
alterity. Secondly, he generates new radical concepts by transmuting ethnographic exposures recursively into forms of conceptual creativity and experimentation
(Holbraad, Pedersen, and Viveiros de Castro 2014). Finally, he hyperbolizes differences by reversing logical oppositions (natureculture, givenconstruct, affinityconsanguinity etc.) while Dumont relativizes radical differences through the
incorporation of encompassed values.

Threesome: Mapping
How does one compare comparisons? In other words, to follow the perspectivist
inspiration: How does one put in perspective these three perspectives on perspective? Viveiros de Castro, Strathern, and Dumont all share a common ground. While
radically distinguishing Euro-America from the social formation(s) they study, all
collapse anthropological analysis and epistemology. Yet they all present distinct
forms of comparative methods
For example, Strathern argues that the things (i.e., the terms of the relation of
differences or, as it were, what is compared) contain their relation and their own
scaling (Strathern [1991] 2004; Holbraad and Pedersen 2009). On the contrary, for
Dumont, the meaning of these things emerges when juxtaposing their hierarchical
relations to other things (see above, the definition of the person in India). For the
ontologists, or at least for Viveiros de Castro, the meaning of things can only appear
through an equivocation such as the one implied in imagining that when the jaguar
says manioc beer [i.e., what the human see as blood] he is referring to the same
thing as us (i.e., a tasty, nutritious and heady brew) (Viveiros de Castro 2004: 6)
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Andr Iteanu and Ismal Moya128

Each orientation collapses different distinctions. Dumont conflates values and

facts under the notion of value, which he deems as the source of a comparison free
of any value judgments.17 Viveiros de Castro collapses the distinction between reality and representation in the notion of ontology to maintain the equivalent value
(continuity) of every form of existence.18 Finally, Strathern collapses the distinction
between parts and wholes to escape Euro-American epistemology and shed light
on crucial contemporary debates on kinship, reproductive technologies, notions of
exchange and production, and so forth.
Each orientation also generates its own obstacles. Dumont invested in multifarious notions of value and hierarchya liberty which has won him many critics.
Viveiros de Castro generalized the ontological perspective and thus engaged in a
recursive conversation with philosophers (especially Gilles Deleuze) who questioned oppositions such as subjectobject, givenconstructed, natureculture, and
so on. Strathern is caught in issues of scaling and the ways they generate forms of
discontinuity. Consequently, her writings are at times quite abstract and easily drift
away from their initial concerns as her analysis unfolds.
Amazonia has often been often compared to Melanesia (cf. Gregor and Tuzin
2001), a resemblance matched by the fact that both Strathern and Viveiros de
Castro center their work on the person, while Dumont only pays moderate attention to it. Yet conceptually, the ontological approach would be closer to Dumont
than to Strathern, inasmuch as they admit the hierarchical nature of categorical
oppositions and the necessity of the concept of totality in certain circumstances.
Finally, methodologically, Strathern is closer to Dumont than to Viveiros de Castro
in that their analysis originates from comparison but does not engage ontologically
with the difference it elicits.
Where Dumont first posits a radical difference then relativizes it, drawing on
locally subordinated values, Strathern relativizes the difference by combining it
with other comparative questions. Ontologists hold on to the radical difference
because they consider it as real as it gets.
For heuristic purposes, we may summarize the distinctions outlined above in a
nave chart, as these seem to be back in style nowadays (see Descola 2013):
Strathern

Dumont

Ontologists

Power

Radical difference

Relationality

Value

Ontology

nil19

Comparison practice

Different axis

Encompassment Equivocation

Domination

Result

Postplural

Hierarchy

Liberation

Metaphysics

17. Dumont dared, for example, to propose a nonmoral (as tenable) anthropological reading of Mein Kampf (Dumont 1986: 14979).
18. However, in Viveiros de Castros words, these diverse worlds cannot be kept valueless
from the point of view of anthropology. The perspectivist Arawetes world is a better
model for anthropology than the Euro-American, as, in that respect, is the Jaguars.
19. Power is universal.

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Mister D.

Dumont believed, quite conventionally , that anthropological knowledge was a cumulative enterprise. Strathern seems to adopt a more leftist strategy, or should
we say behave as a contemporary artist, as her knowledge is consumed in the very
act of its production. Finally, Viveiro de Castro and the ontologists pursue political
goals: to place indigenous peoples ontologies and the Euro-American philosophical tradition on an equal footing.

Values in motion: Hierarchy, power, and dualism

Since modes of comparison are intimately linked to the social formation regarding
which they have been created (India, Melanesia, Amazonia, etc.), it is crucial to
put these methods to the test away from their context of origin. The contributions
in this section aim to engage with Dumonts comparative project and method in
Melanesia, Africa, Amazonia, and Indonesia. As we outlined above, comparison
draws on a radical difference between social formations but never promotes symmetry since no social formation is coextensive with the paramount value that characterizes it. On the contrary, Dumonts method assumes that no single value can be
fully hegemonic: a paramount value always coexists with other values that contradict it. Even individualism always combines with holistic values that contradict it
in one way or another (Dumont 1983: 1719, 1994: 316).
In this section, Dumonts Indian findings are neglected yet his comparative
approach is not. Taken together, the contributions provide an understanding of
the contradictions between values which aims to relativize the overstated contrast which grounds the comparative enterprise Indeed, Dumonts comparative
project does not only focus on the question of what are the differences in our
world(s) but also inquires into their becoming. As Iteanu remarks in his contribution, Dumont mostly dealt with changing value configurations in times of
historical transition, whether it was the relationship between castes and Vedic
texts in India, the emergence of the economic category in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Euro-America (1977), the history of individualism from Stoicism
to Hitler (1986), or the transformation of German ideology between 1770 and
1830 (1994). For change puts values in motion, it reveals the contradictions and
relations between them. The main question at stake in the contributions gathered
in this section is the nature of the relations between values: Is it hierarchy, power,
or dualism?
Andr Iteanu is concerned with the emergence of new configuration of values
in Melanesia. He argues that change is a process of recycling values rather than
radical creation. According to him, everything flows in Melanesia: objects as well
as persons, villages, rituals or ancestors. Over time, relations wither, giving way
to a world without limits and direction. People act to slow down and temporarily stabilize this movement: relations must be reactivated for a time by ritual and
especially exchanges. In this sociality, the meaningless movement, especially that
of the ancestors, has a subordinated value: it is necessary to establish new relations with the outside from which the objects and rituals essential to sociality
are elicited. In this configuration, the coming of the Whites and Christianity
were synonymous with an unprecedented potential expansion of sociality that
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Andr Iteanu and Ismal Moya130

initially gave rise to high hopes of creating new fruitful relations of exchanges.
People abandoned their rituals, converted to Christianity, and embarked on various modern projects. However, their hopes were progressively dashed. The ancestors migrated abroad. They are now as unresponsive as the politicians in the
capital, the Whites, and even God. In spite of the peoples creative efforts (letters
to the dead, the reconfiguration of mythology to include relations to the Whites,
the proliferation of new churches, etc.), all meaningful relations (those in which
objects flows) have withered. In the wake of the arrival of the Whites and Christianity, the value that was previously subordinated now holds sway over sociality.
Obsolete or subordinated values are recycled to build the new configurations.
However, this process in not a mere inversion: the hierarchy gave way to a configuration in which values (openness and relationality) struggle against each other
on the same level.
Joel Robbins contribution on hierarchical dynamism analyzes the competing
relation between individualistic and holistic values generated by the recent conversion to Christianity in Melanesia, Africa, and Amazonia. Following massive conversions, individualism as a value introduced by Christianity became paramount.
However, its full realization is limited by the importance of other values, namely
relational ones. According to Robbins, the dynamism of social life is driven by this
struggle between values. Instead of understanding the contradictions between values as being caused by power relations or failures of the social order, Robbins draws
on Dumonts notion of encompassment of the contrary. Hierarchy is essentially
the recognition of the importance of subordinate values. According to Robbins,
the dynamism driven by the struggle between contradicting values is inherent in
social life.
One could argue that such configurations are peculiar to transitional phases in
which remote social formations have recently encountered individualistic values,
especially those introduced by a universalist religion. Ismal Moya deals with a
context, Dakar, the capital of Senegal, in which Islam has been present for centuries. In this case, exchange ceremonies of birth and marriage in which women
honor kinship relations with lavish gifts are condemned as a local custom (aada)
that prevents the full realization of two universalistic and individualistic values: Islam and economic rationality. Yet a comparative experiment allows us to recognize
that the relations at stake in exchange ceremonies are highly valued on another
level. In Dakar, as in Euro-America, finance is king. However, in the former, money
does not only circulate in commodity relations but is involved in every meaningful
relation. Neither economics, nor politics or even religion can synchronize the financial relations that compose this sociality: only life-cycle ceremonies (especially
birth and marriage) successfully manage to do so. Whereas in the Euro-American
configuration, the primacy of the economic dimension impinges on the political
(Dumont 1977), the economy in Dakar is subordinated to women exchanges ceremonies. Moreover, Muslim rituals are systematically articulated to the exchange
in birth and marriage: womens exchange ceremonies combine hierarchically with
Islam, the paramount order of value: that of absolute submission of the individual
to God.
Aparecida Vilaas paper on Christianity in Amazonia, and especially among
the Wari, offers a challenging counterpoint that introduces a perspectivist point
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Mister D.

of view on the issues at stake in this section. Wari sociality is characterized by

interspecific transformability (see above). Persons and animals are composed of
human (predator) and animal (prey). Wari pre-Christian sociality was composed
of two movements in opposing directions: on the one hand, the everyday ones
of eclipsing alterity and producing kinship relations among humans and, on the
other, ritual movement (collective ceremonies, warfare, and shamanic action) in
which relations of alterity were objectified and stabilized. The model here is not
that of hierarchy but of oscillation, recursive movements in opposing directions
which are integral to the perspectivist paradigm. In other words, hierarchy exists
but is perpetually reversing. Christianity was initially appropriated in this configuration. For example, Vilaa shows that the Wari perceived Christianity as an
additional way to eclipse alterity (the animal/prey component) of human selves,
that is, to stabilize the human component, as they did before through kinship.
However, another aspect of Christianity introduced an oscillation: the presence of
thedevil,which corresponds to the animal side of the Wari and the human pole
of the animals. The devil reconstituted dividuality by restoring to the animals the
agency taken from them by God (who also was originally dividual before detaching the devil). This configuration progressively transformed after the Christian
revivalism of the twenty-first century. Traditional rituals, and especially shamanism, disappeared; the constitutive difference between affinity and consanguinity
was replaced by the extension of Christian fraternity to everyone; and the devil
shifted from acting through animals to enter the person directly, thereby suppressing his or her animal pole. Rituals are now aimed at the production of identity. From a perspectivist point of view, the changes introduced by Christianity,
although not fully realized, tend toward a paralysis of the world, illustrated by the
Wari interpretation of the Christian afterlife as a dualism made absolute between
heaven, a place of superlative humanity composed of individuals deprived of any
relation, and hell, a place of superlative animality, composed of endlessly roasting
prey.
Ccile Barrauds contribution deals with Dumonts fascination with equality
in the context of Dravidian kinship categories, in contrast with the hierarchical
principle of caste. However, she foregrounds his idea of the equivalent value of the
sexes, eclipsed in the anthropological conversation by Dumonts argument of equal
value between affinity and consanguinity. Through a examination of sex distinction in different kinship terminologies, she explores different meanings of the ideas
of equality and hierarchy that suggest a comparative perspective on the equality of
the sexes as distinguished from gender equality.
We would conclude by observing that Dumonts comparative project, as we understand it, has not been made obsolete by social changes, whether urbanization,
religious conversion, or globalization. Instead, it has been clarified and revivified.
As we have seen, radical comparison draws on differences, but depends neither
on the preservation of an alterity between bounded societies (or wholes, worlds,
etc.) nor on the elaboration of generic crosscultural categories. On the contrary,
Dumonts comparative practice focuses firstly on the radical but relative (and thus
never absolute) contrast between hierarchies of values but also, secondly, on the
dynamic contradictions between values, which are especially intensified by social
changes and the interaction between cultures.
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Andr Iteanu and Ismal Moya132

Acknowledgments
We thank Giovanni da Col for his editorial critique and dedication.

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Mister D.: Comparaison radicale, valeurs et thorie ethnographique

Rsum: Cet article suggre que la pertinence des travaux de Louis Dumont pour
la thorie ethnographique contemporaine rside dans sa conception radicale de la
comparaison comme une exprimentation sur la diffrence qui abolit la distinction
entre analyse anthropologique et pistmologie. Le texte applique donc la mthode
de Dumontla comparaison son anthropologie. Dans la premire partie, nous
suivons le fil de la rencontre de Dumont avec le systme des castes indien et le
contraste radical quil a tabli avec lEuro-Amrique pour proposer une perspective
sur sa mthode comparative et ses principales notions (valeur, hirarchie, englobement). Dans la seconde partie, la stratgie anthropologique de Dumont est mise
en perspective avec deux autres projets de comparaison radicale: celui de Marilyn
Strathern sur la Mlansie et celui dEduardo Viveiros de Castro sur lAmazonie.
Andr Iteanu is Directeur de Recherche at the CNRS and Directeur dtudes at the
EPHE in Paris, France. He has worked for many years with the Orokaiva of Papua
New Guinea and with troubled youth in Cergy-Pontoise, a suburb of Paris. He recently edited a volume, La cohrence des socits (2010), and translated an Orokaiva
autobiography written by Lucien Vevehupa, The man who would not die (2013).

Andr Iteanu

Centre Asie du Sud-Est - CNRS

190 Avenue de France

75013 Paris
France
iteanu@msh-paris.fr
2015 | Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 5 (1): 113136

Andr Iteanu and Ismal Moya136

Ismal Moya is a former economist who converted to social anthropology under

the influence of his ongoing fieldwork in a poor suburb neighborhood of Dakar,
Senegal. He is Charg de Recherche at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS, France), and a member of the Laboratoire dEthnologie et de
Sociologie Comparative (Universit de Nanterre, France). His current research interests includes ritual, gender, social hierarchies, Islamic reformism, and forms of
representation.

Ismal Moya

CNRS, Laboratoire dEthnologie et de Sociologie Comparative, UMR 7186

Maison Archologie & Ethnologie Ren-Ginouvs

21, Alle de lUniversit

92023 Nanterre cedex
France
ismael.moya@cnrs.fr

2015 | Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 5 (1): 113136