Gloria o maldición del individualismo moderno según Louis Dumont

Abstract

As a starting point for discussing Louis Dumont's notion of individualism, this article uncovers two intersecting perspectives in the author's work: one, methodological, pertaining to the anthropological study of Indian Civilization, and, the other, theoretical, referring to the relation between individual and society, in Maussian terms. An analysis of Dumont's structural and comparative approach leads us to see how individualism, while ideologically at odds with hierarchy, as exemplified by the Indian caste system, may, nonetheless, be found to be quite similar to its ideological opposite in respect to logical properties which pertain to sociological englobement and veiling of values and practices. Thus, one sees how there is room within individualistic systems, notwithstanding their liberal and equalitarian features, for totalitarian and racist ideologies, the perversions of hierarchy which treat inequality on assymetrical sociological planes as "nature".