33 Milton Singer Mckim Marriott, Dumont

Vijit Dipani

Contents

1.   Milton Singer

1.1 Cultural Role of South India

2. McKim Marriott

2.1 Universalization and Parochialization

2.2 Social Ranking

2.3 Social Mobility

3. Louis Dumont (1911-1998)

3.1 Study of the Caste system in India

Learning Objectives:

1.  To study the contribution of eminent anthropologists:

• Milton Singer
• McKim Marriott
• Louis Dumont

2. Life history of anthropologists

3.  Theories and concepts emphasized/propounded by them

1.   Milton Singer

Singer was born in a small village in Poland. He came to the United States with his family as a child and grew up in Detroit, where he attended public schools. He received his B.A. (1934) and his M.A. (1936) degrees from the University of Texas. He came to Chicago to study philosophy and obtained his Ph.D. (1940) degree from the University. Singer developed keen interest in philosophical, or semiotic, anthropology. He joined the University faculty in 1941 and worked with other faculty members (1941-1951) to develop a three-year, integrated program in social sciences for undergraduates. He received the Llewellyn John and Harriet Manchester Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching in 1948.

Singer’s research on India began when he helped direct an interdisciplinary project on the study of cultures and civilizations with Robert Redfield. Upon Redfield’s death in 1958, Singer became project director, a position he held until 1961. Singer’s fieldwork in India during the 1950s and 1960s allowed him to test the notion that India would not be able to advance economically because its people were too tied to their traditions of caste and Hindu spirituality.

From 1955 to 1970, Singer helped organize and lead the Committee on Southern Asian Studies. Prominent scholars from South Asia as well as American researchers were invited to join the University faculty to expand the work done at Chicago on the region. In 1970, Singer expanded his work to include an anthropological approach to the study of American culture. His work in this area led to the publication of Man’s Glassy Essence: Explorations in Semiotic Anthropology. Singer was named the Paul Klapper Professor in 1952. He held visiting professorships at Berkeley, the University of Hawaii, the University of Puerto Rico, and the University of California, San Diego. He became emeritus in 1979. In the following years, while continuing to develop semiotic analysis, Singer also initiated a broadly interdisciplinary project on culture and nuclear policy that addressed issues with far-reaching consequences for the future of humanity. Singer was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1972. He was chosen to be the Distinguished Lecturer of the American Anthropological Association in 1978, and he received the Distinguished Scholar Award of the Association for Asian Studies in 1984.

His important publications include Structure and Change in Indian Society (1958, (ed.)), when a Great Tradition Modernizes: An Anthropological Approach to Indian Civilization (1972) and Traditional India: Structure and Change (1975). His other books include Man’s Glassy Essence: Explorations in Semiotic Anthropology (1984) and Semiotics of Cities, Selves, and Cultures (1991). His edited book, Structure and Change in Indian Society (1958) throws light upon contemporary study of religious traditions in India.

1.1 Cultural Role of South India

Singer studied the cultural role of Madras city in South India and tried to show as to how great traditions are transformed or modified in the light of little traditions. During a trip to Madras, India, he studied industrialists to learn how their careers had been affected by their culture. But the result suggested that industrial leaders and their families were able to successfully mobilise from village and small town to a large city and from agriculture and commerce to modern education and modern industry, without losing their traditional institutions. He even stated that these social institutions have often proved adaptive in modern industry. In his book, Traditional India: Structure and Change (1975), Singer introduced the concepts of cultural geography, cultural performance, cultural specialists and cultural media. These concepts (together form cultural complex) create an interaction bridge between great and little tradition of Indian civilization. Inspired by the conceptual framework of Redfield and Singer, Professor L. P. Vidyarthi later conducted an exhaustive study of Sacred city of Gaya and developed the complex phenomenon of sacred complex (which includes sacred geography, sacred performances and sacred specialist).

Tradition means handing down of beliefs, customs and information by word of mouth from one generation to another. Great tradition is associated with elites, literature and reflective few who are capable of analysing, interpreting and reflecting cultural knowledge. On the other hand, little tradition comprises belief pattern, the institutions, knowledge including folk tales, legends, myths and the folklore of the folk and peasant who inculcate cultural ideas from the great tradition. Cultural performances are institutionalized around the structure of both the great and little traditions.

The area of great tradition includes the textual or the Shastriya nuances, while the paradigm of little tradition comprises folk/peasants and local orientations of textual knowledge and cultural performances. The Ramayana and the Mahabharata are valuable religious texts developed in accordance to cultural performances. The local orientations of these religious texts have been written in local dialects for the folk/peasant people. In a village, the school teacher plays a vital role in progress of the little tradition. He plays several cultural performances and organises several mythological plays, dramas, recitation of sacred language which besides providing entertainment, help in enhancing and remembering beliefs and knowledge of little tradition.

The two traditions are interdependent. As great traditions in India are tied to cultural elements, any change which occurs at an important centre triggers similar changes at other centres with time. Once the centre of the great tradition absorbs the reform, it causes some changes in the little tradition of its hinterland. Thus the process of change is top-down in Indian civilization. Milton Singer uses the term ‘hierarchic and low-culture’ to signify the dichotomy between the great and little traditions.

2.   McKim Marriott

McKim Marriott was a student of Robert Redfield, Chicago University. In 1955, he was appointed as Professor in the Department of Anthropology in Social Sciences Collegiate Division of the University of Chicago. He conducted field work in Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra and authored varied studies on rural social organization and change. Marriott used the structural-functional approach in his study of village India. His important works include -Village India: Studies in the Little Community (1955), Caste Ranking and Community Structure in the Five Regions of India and Pakistan (1960) and India through Hindu Categories (1990). Marriott utilized the structural-functional approach in his study of village India. Marriott had conducted some studies on social change in India utilizing this conceptual framework. He has made significant contribution to field of social anthropology. His major contributions are discussed below.

2.1 Universalization and Parochialization

Mckim Marriott in his “Little Communities in an indigenous Civilization” propounded two important processes or concepts – universalization and parochialization. The interaction in the context of the indigenous village communities in India in relation to the civilization process was explained by Mckim Marriott in terms of parochialization and universalization of culture. He closely observed the socio-religious organization in Kishangarhi village in Uttar Pradesh. He established these concepts on the basis of Great tradition and Little traditions concepts propounded by Robert Redfield. These two processes are complementary to each other. Universalization refers to downward devolution of elements of great tradition and their integration with elements of little tradition. Unlike Universalization, Parochialization is a process by which some literate or Sanskritic elements of great tradition are learnt about and modified by the village or folk people to become a part of their tradition. The process of parochialization constitutes the characteristic creative work of little communities within India’s indigenous civilization. He opined that as visible through its festivals and deities the religion of the Kishangarhi village may have developed as a result of continuous process of communication between a little, local tradition and great traditions. Sanskritization, according to him, does not proceed as an independent process; it is superimposed on non-sanskritic cultural forms through accretion rather than simple replacement. The possibility of styles of life moving upward can be seen in social context when Brahmins migrating to remote areas appear to take over some of the local customs. He argues that there is a constant interaction between the great and little traditions.

Thus Indian civilization can be understood with the help of universalization and parochialization. Moreover concepts of universalization of little traditions and localization of great tradition is not confined to Hindu culture, but applicable to other cultural dimensions of great and little tradition

2.2 Social Ranking

According to Marriott, Rural stratification is closed while in urban areas, the stratification system is relatively open and its character is ‘interactional’. In other words, if a certain individual group or family is able to acquire high status attributes such as education, wealth, or better occupational position in the cities, the individual or group may be able to pass as a member of higher social rank. In the villages, on the other hand, the social rank depends more on the traditional evaluation of caste status. This is reflected in most forms of inter-group or inter-individual interactions. Also in the metropolitan areas, the principle of ‘corporate ranking’ (status is attributed to the entire group) has no place but it prevails in the rural system of stratification.

In the rural caste system principles of purity and pollution, hereditary occupation and kinship relations make the ranking system corporate. The process of status mobility through sanskritization, in a way, manifests this corporateness in the rural ranking system.

In his article, “Multiple Reference in Indian Caste System”, Marriot opined reference group approach to the study of caste stratification system in India. He argues that in order to gain fuller understanding of the stratification system in India, its processes should be observed at various levels. He considers three zones:

(1)  the zone of the village community and its directly connected parts in the countryside;

(2)  the zone of the recognized cultural or linguistic region; and

(3)  the zone of whole civilization.

Marriott’s analysis does not indicate the complexity of the social stratification system in India, but it offers us an insight into the mechanisms by which stratification process at one level, such as rural or metropolitan, interacts with that of other levels such as those of the three zones of the village, region and civilization.

2.3 Social Mobility

Marriott (1968), reviewing a number of studies on social mobility, finds relevant distinctions at three levels in the ranking system related to the Indian mobility pattern. These are based on distinctions between: (1) rural from metropolitan types of ranking system, (2) individual or group from corporate units in ranking, and (3) a series of successively wider zones of reference for the units in any local system, the several zones being characterized by distinctive values. The zones, according to him, are the village, the linguistic, region and the whole civilization.

3.   Louis Dumont (1911-1998)

Louis Dumont was a pioneer and a renowned personality in the fields of sociology and anthropology in the world. Dumont was born in Thessaloniki (Greece) in 1911. He was a disciple of the French anthropologist Marcel Mauss at the Institute of Ethnology of the Museum of Man (Musée de l’Homme) in Paris (1936-1939), and later joined the Museum for Arts and Popular Traditions where he became assistant, then associate researcher (1937-1951). His first book, La Tarasque (1951) is an ethnographic study of a folk festival in southern France. He was an imprisoned in Germany as a result of World War II (1940-1945). During this period, he started learning Sanskrit with the German Indologist and Jain scholar Walther Schubring.

Post-war period, he visited South India and conducted fieldwork among the Kallar in Tamil Nadu. In 1957, he published a monograph on A South Indian Sub-caste: Social Organization and Religion of the Pramalai Kallar (1986, English edition), which significantly transformed the paradigm of the sociology of India. Dumont did not give importance to the concept of the village organization and focused on the caste (or the sub-caste), emphasising the hierarchical social organisation which encompassed a territory wider than a village to study Indian society. Dumont followed Indological and structuralist approach to study the caste system in India. His book Homo Hierarchicus (1970, English edition) is one of the most widely discussed work on the subject. He stated that, people were ascribed an unequal status from birth and ranked in social hierarchy in accordance to principle of purity and pollution attached to each caste.

After coming back from India, Dumont became lecturer at the University of Oxford. In 1955, Dumont was elected professor at the then sixth section of the Ecole pratique des hautes études at Paris where he gave lectures on the sociology of India and then comparative sociology. In 1957, in collaboration with the British anthropologist David Pocock, Dumont founded a new academic journal, Contributions to Indian Sociology, published at Oxford and Paris, which is regarded as important journal on sociology. In this journal, Dumont published several studies on topics such as village community, caste, marriage and kinship.

He had keen interest in study of Hinduism, caste, kinship in ancient India, and social-political movements in modern India. He died in Paris in 1998. His contribution to field of social anthropology could be categorised as:

3.1 Study of the Caste system in India

He has utilized the Indological and structuralist approach to the study of caste system and village social structure in India. Dumont observes caste ideology in Indology, and in the assumption of the unity of Indian civilization. The concept of hierarchy has an important place in Dumont’s study of caste system. The Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and Its Implications (1966) is a complete, theoretical work that helps us to examine available ethnographic data on caste. It talks about the concept of hierarchy to differentiate Indian society from ‘modern’ societies whose follow social principle of equality. Dumont suggested that ‘traditional’ societies are characterized by conception of the collective nature of man and prevalence of social rather than individual goals, and thus by ritual hierarchy, based on the idea of purity and pollution. On the other hand, ‘Modern’ societies are characterized by individual goals and benefits and hence by egalitarian society’.

For him, caste is group of relationships governed by economic, political and kinship milieu, sustained by certain beliefs and customs. Dumont identifies ‘hierarchy’ as the essential value underlying the caste system, supported by Hinduism. While other interactional theorists laid emphasis upon ritual hierarchy and secular hierarchy, Dumont talks about only ritual hierarchy.

He begins with Bougie’s work on the caste system. There are three basic attributes of caste:

(a) Hierarchy

(b) Separation

(c) Division of labour

Thus, he describes mainly three features of Indian caste system:

1. India is composed of many small territories and castes;
2. Every caste is limited to particular and definite geographic area.
3. Marrying outside one’s own caste is not possible in the caste system

Dumont stated that the Jajmani system is a ritual expression rather than an economic arrangement. According to him, this system is governed by a specific set of ideas which impose limits upon economic power. The principle of hierarchy which delineates who is dominant and dominated, justifies the position of these groups. This principle opposes economic activities. Thus jajmani system is the religious expression of interdependence, where interdependence itself is derived from religion. Regarding commensal transactions, purity of the consumer, consuming place and the occasion is significant. According to Dumont, commensal regulations emphasize hierarchy rather separation. Dumont, in his Homo Hierarchicus, has built up a model of Indian civilization, which is based on a non-competitive ritual hierarchical system.

Dumont’s approach in relation caste system in India was highly criticized. The features of caste system as suggested by Dumont seem to be unchanging. Dumont’s work basically relies upon traditional Indian texts. Consequently, the features of the caste system, as projected by Dumont, seem to be unchanging. In reality, the caste system has transformed in various aspects during a period of time. Moreover, he emphasized the integrative function of caste system relating to its ‘stagnancy’.

Dumont makes a distinction between ‘power’ and ‘status’. However other authors consider it to be wrong conception. Dumont didn’t pay attention towards the number of protest movements, which emerged in Indian history questioning the ideology of the caste division itself, through his emphasis on values. The concept of purity and impurity opposition emphasized by Dumont is also not universal. In certain tribal societies ‘status’ is not vested in purity but in ‘sacredness’.

REFERENCES

Weblinks:

• http://chronicle.uchicago.edu/941208/singer.shtml
• http://nsdl.niscair.res.in/jspui/bitstream/123456789/940/1/Indian%20village%20as%20a %20%20unity%20and%20extension,%20village%20and%20caste-by%20Suninder%20(1).pdf
• http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=acls;idno=heb03281
• http://www.sociologyguide.com/anthropology/universalization-and-parochialization-mckim-marriott.php
• http://www.yourarticlelibrary.com/sociology/louis-dumont-biography-and-contribution-to-world-sociology/35021/
• http://www.yourarticlelibrary.com/sociology/mckim-marriott-biography-and-contribution-to-world-sociology/35018/
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11wYlRW5BB4