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Informationen zum Autor Robert Parkin is a social anthropologist who took his doctorate at the University of Oxford in 1984 for a thesis on kinship in South and Southeast Asia. His main theoretical interests are in kinship, religion and identity, and he has conducted research and field enquiries in Orissa (India), Poland, Italy and Brussels. Klappentext The work of Louis Dumont, who died in 1998, on India and modern individualism represented certain theoretical advances on the earlier structuralism of Claude Lévi-Strauss. One such advance is Dumont's idea of hierarchical opposition, which he proposed as a truer representation of indigenous ideologies than Lévi-Strauss's binary opposition. In this book the author argues that, although structuralism is often thought to have gone out of fashion, Dumont's greater concern with praxis and agency makes his own version of structuralism more contemporary. The work of his followers and fellow travelers, as well as his own, indicates that hierarchical opposition is capable of taking structuralism in new and more realistic directions, reminding us that it has never been the preserve of Lévi-Strauss alone. Zusammenfassung The work of Louis Dumont, who died in 1998, on India and modern individualism represented certain theoretical advances on the earlier structuralism of Claude Lévi-Strauss. One such advance is Dumont's idea of hierarchical opposition, which he proposed as a truer representation of indigenous ideologies than Lévi-Strauss's binary opposition. In this book the author argues that, although structuralism is often thought to have gone out of fashion, Dumont's greater concern with praxis and agency makes his own version of structuralism more contemporary. The work of his followers and fellow travelers, as well as his own, indicates that hierarchical opposition is capable of taking structuralism in new and more realistic directions, reminding us that it has never been the preserve of Lévi-Strauss alone. Inhaltsverzeichnis Chapter 1. Introduction Chapter 2. Needham's Development of Hertz Chapter 3. The Dumontian Reaction: understanding Chapter 4. The Background to Dumont's Revision in India and Elsewhere Chapter 5. The Reception of Hierarchical Opposition Chapter 6. The School of Dumont: From Classification to Ritual Analysis Chapter 7. Residue, Cosmos and Economics Chapter 8. Innocence and Possibility Chapter 9. Legacies and Lessons Bibliography Index ...