Caste, Hierarchy and Race in a World-Historical Perspective: Louis Dumont and his Critique of Max Weber

Abstract

This article examines a classical debate concerning intercultural comparisons of historical outcastes. It focuses on Louis Dumont's critical engagement with Max Weber's conceptualisation of caste and the definition of the Jews as a Pariah people. Dumont criticises Weber's influential discussion of caste and ethnic segregation in which a south Indian caste, the Pariyars, is linked with the Jews. He argues that Weber neglects hierarchy and undermines intercultural comparisons. Dumont's proposition is that racism emerged with the principle of equality. Based on the American transition from slavery to democracy, he speculates that the Western distinction between soul and body had reinvented the social order into a hierarchy of racial identities. Equality repressed its hierarchy, whereas India's caste system was explicitly hierarchical. This article concludes that Weber and Dumont represent a methodological contrast that is noteworthy for cross-cultural comparisons, while also emphasising the intellectualist inclination in Dumont's preoccupation with hierarchy in a world-historical perspective.