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Volume 12
Methodology & History in Anthropology
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An Introduction to Two Theories of Social Anthropology
Descent Groups and Marriage Alliance
Louis Dumont
Translated by Robert Parkin
148 pages,
ISBN 978-1-84545-146-2 $135.00/£99.00 / Hb / Published (May 2006)
ISBN 978-1-84545-147-9 $29.95/£23.95 / Pb / Published (May 2006)
Description
Louis Dumont, who died in 1998, was one of the most important figures in post-war French anthropology. He is well-known for his early work on India, which culminated in Homo Hierarchicus (1966; in English 1972, 1980), an anthropological account of the caste system. He later extended this work into a comparison of the values of Indian and western society in works like Essays on Individualism (1986) and German ideology: From France to Germany and Back (1994). He is also known for pioneering work on kinship in south India and more generally (for example Affinity as a Value, 1983). The current volume represents the fruits of this side of his activities and originated in as a series of lectures providing an account of the British and French schools for students.
Robert Parkin is a Departmental Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Oxford. He has a longstanding interest in the anthropology of kinship, represented by Kinship: an Introduction to Basic Concepts (1997) and Kinship and Family: n Anthropological Reader (2004, edited with Linda Stone). He has also published a full-length study of Dumont in the same Berghahn series (Louis Dumont and hierarchical opposition, 2003).