Homo Hierarchicus
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Homo Hierarchicus
''Homo Hierarchicus: Essai sur le système des castes'' (1966) is Louis Dumont's treatise on the Indian caste system. It analyses the caste hierarchy and the ascendancy tendency of the lower castes to follow the habits of the higher castes. This concept was termed as Sanskritisation by MN Srinivas. He states that the ideology of caste system is fundamentally contrary to our idea of egalitarian society and arises from the nature, conditions and limitations of realisation of such a society. We can not restrict ourselves to understand caste system only as a form of 'Social stratification'. See also * Names for the human species In addition to the generally accepted Taxonomy (biology), taxonomic name ''Homo sapiens'' (Latin: "sapient human", Carl Linnaeus, Linnaeus 1758), other Latin-based names for the human species have been created to refer to various aspects of the h ... References and Notes Anthropology books Books about the caste system in India 1966 non-fiction b ...
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Louis Dumont (anthropologist)
Louis Charles Jean Dumont (11 August 1911 – 19 November 1998) was a French anthropologist. Dumont was born in Thessaloniki, in the Salonica Vilayet of the Ottoman Empire. He taught at Oxford University during the 1950s, and was then director of the ''École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales'' (EHESS) in Paris. A specialist on the cultures and societies of India, Dumont also studied western social philosophy and ideologies. Works His works include '' Homo Hierarchicus: Essai sur le système des castes'' (1966), ''From Mandeville to Marx: The Genesis and Triumph of Economic Ideology'' (1977) and ''Essais sur l'individualisme: Une perspective anthropologique sur l'idéologie moderne'' (1983), in which he contrasts holism with individualism. Dumont died, aged 87, in Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th m ...
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Indian Caste System
The caste system in India is the paradigmatic ethnographic example of classification of castes. It has its origins in ancient India, and was transformed by various ruling elites in medieval, early-modern, and modern India, especially the Mughal Empire and the British Raj. It is today the basis of affirmative action programmes in India as enforced through its constitution. The caste system consists of two different concepts, ''varna'' and '' jati'', which may be regarded as different levels of analysis of this system. Based on DNA analysis, endogamous i.e. non-intermarrying Jatis originated during the Gupta Empire. Our modern understanding of caste as an institution in India has been influenced by the collapse of the Mughal era and the rise of the British colonial government in India. The collapse of the Mughal era saw the rise of powerful men who associated themselves with kings, priests and ascetics, affirming the regal and martial form of the caste ideal, and it also r ...
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Sanskritisation
Sanskritisation (or Sanskritization) is a term in sociology which refers to the process by which castes or tribes placed lower in the caste hierarchy seek 'upward' mobility by emulating the rituals and practices of the dominant castes or upper castes. It is a process similar to "passing" in sociological terms. This term was made popular by Indian sociologist M. N. Srinivas in the 1950s. In a broader sense, also called Brahmanisation, it is a historical process in which "local" Indian religious traditions become syncretised, or aligned to and absorbed within the Brahmanical religion, resulting in the pan-Indian religion of Hinduism. Definition Srinivas defined ''Sanskritisation'' as a process by which In a broader sense, Sanskritisation is In this process, local traditions ("little traditions") become integrated into the "great tradition" of Brahmanical religion, disseminating Sanskrit texts and Brahmanical ideas throughout India, and abroad. This facilitated the devel ...
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MN Srinivas
Mysore Narasimhachar Srinivas (1916–1999) was an Indian sociologist and social anthropologist. He is mostly known for his work on caste and caste systems, social stratification, Sanskritisation and Westernisation in southern India and the concept of ' dominant caste'. He is considered to be one of the pioneering personalities in the field of sociology and social anthropology in India as his work in Rampura (later published as '' The Remembered Village'') remains one of the early examples of ethnography in India. That was in contrast to most of his contemporaries of the Bombay School, who focused primarily on a historical methodology to conduct research, mainly in Indology. Biography Srinivas was born in a brahmin family on 16 November 1916. Srinivas earned his doctorate in sociology from the University of Bombay (later renamed as University of Mumbai) and went to All Souls College, University of Oxford for his fellowship. Although, he had already written a book on fam ...
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Ideology
An ideology is a set of beliefs or philosophies attributed to a person or group of persons, especially those held for reasons that are not purely epistemic, in which "practical elements are as prominent as theoretical ones." Formerly applied primarily to economic, political, or religious theories and policies, in a tradition going back to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, more recent use the term as mainly condemnatory. The term was coined by Antoine Destutt de Tracy, a French Enlightenment aristocrat and philosopher, who conceived it in 1796 as the "science of ideas" to develop a rational system of ideas to oppose the irrational impulses of the mob. In political science, the term is used in a descriptive sense to refer to political belief systems. Etymology and history The term ''ideology'' originates from French ''idéologie'', itself deriving from combining (; close to the Lockean sense of ''idea'') and '' -logíā'' (). The term ideology, and the system of ideas asso ...
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Egalitarianism
Egalitarianism (), or equalitarianism, is a school of thought within political philosophy that builds from the concept of social equality, prioritizing it for all people. Egalitarian doctrines are generally characterized by the idea that all humans are equal in fundamental worth or moral status. Egalitarianism is the doctrine that all citizens of a state should be accorded exactly equal rights. Egalitarian doctrines have motivated many modern social movements and ideas, including the Enlightenment, feminism, civil rights, and international human rights. The term ''egalitarianism'' has two distinct definitions in modern English, either as a political doctrine that all people should be treated as equals and have the same political, economic, social and civil rights, or as a social philosophy advocating the removal of economic inequalities among people, economic egalitarianism, or the decentralization of power. Sources define egalitarianism as equality reflecting the natural st ...
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Social Stratification
Social stratification refers to a society's categorization of its people into groups based on socioeconomic factors like wealth, income, race, education, ethnicity, gender, occupation, social status, or derived power (social and political). As such, stratification is the relative social position of persons within a social group, category, geographic region, or social unit. In modern Western societies, social stratification is typically defined in terms of three social classes: the upper class, the middle class, and the lower class; in turn, each class can be subdivided into the upper-stratum, the middle-stratum, and the lower stratum. Moreover, a social stratum can be formed upon the bases of kinship, clan, tribe, or caste, or all four. The categorization of people by social stratum occurs most clearly in complex state-based, polycentric, or feudal societies, the latter being based upon socio-economic relations among classes of nobility and classes of peasants. Whether socia ...
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Names For The Human Species
In addition to the generally accepted taxonomic name ''Homo sapiens'' (Latin: "sapient human", Linnaeus 1758), other Latin-based names for the human species have been created to refer to various aspects of the human character. The common name of the human species in English is historically ''man'' (from Germanic), often replaced by the Latinate ''human'' (since the 16th century). In the world's languages The Indo-European languages have a number of inherited terms for mankind. The etymon of ''man'' is found in the Germanic languages, and is cognate with ''Manu'', the name of the human progenitor in Hindu mythology, and found in Indic terms for "man" (''manuṣya, manush, manava'' etc.). Latin ''homo'' is derived from an Indo-European root '' dʰǵʰm-'' "earth", as it were "earthling". It has cognates in Baltic (Old Prussian ''zmūi''), Germanic (Gothic ''guma'') and Celtic (Old Irish ''duine''). This is comparable to the explanation given in the Genesis narrative to th ...
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Anthropology Books
Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of behavior, while cultural anthropology studies cultural meaning, including norms and values. A portmanteau term sociocultural anthropology is commonly used today. Linguistic anthropology studies how language influences social life. Biological or physical anthropology studies the biological development of humans. Archaeological anthropology, often termed as 'anthropology of the past', studies human activity through investigation of physical evidence. It is considered a branch of anthropology in North America and Asia, while in Europe archaeology is viewed as a discipline in its own right or grouped under other related disciplines, such as history and palaeontology. Etymology The abstract noun ''anthropology'' is first attested in reference to hi ...
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Books About The Caste System In India
A book is a medium for recording information in the form of writing or images, typically composed of many pages (made of papyrus, parchment, vellum, or paper) bound together and protected by a cover. The technical term for this physical arrangement is ''codex'' (plural, ''codices''). In the history of hand-held physical supports for extended written compositions or records, the codex replaces its predecessor, the scroll. A single sheet in a codex is a leaf and each side of a leaf is a page. As an intellectual object, a book is prototypically a composition of such great length that it takes a considerable investment of time to compose and still considered as an investment of time to read. In a restricted sense, a book is a self-sufficient section or part of a longer composition, a usage reflecting that, in antiquity, long works had to be written on several scrolls and each scroll had to be identified by the book it contained. Each part of Aristotle's ''Physics'' is called a bo ...
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