Chapter 2 - A Contrarian's Most Contrarian Notion: Dumont on Hierarchy

Summary

“Thou shalt neither think about hierarchy, nor with it”

“Joined at the hip” is the way we might describe Dumont's attachment to the concept of hierarchy. In one writing after another, Dumont has employed “hierarchy” as a key concept for understanding religion and society. More than that, Dumont has been forthright in his appreciation for the relative merits of religions and societies so organized, and eager to promote the insights gained thereby elsewhere. Many religious folk will tend to find the assertion of this notion congenial and perhaps long overdue. After all, to many religious folk, hierarchy can be an order ordained by the sacred, literally “the rule of the sacred (sometimes ‘priest’)—the ‘archko’ of the ‘hieros’.” Indeed, it might be seen as the essence of religion itself in proclaiming the governing role of the sacred. This would especially be true for most traditional religions, whether they be theistic, like Islam, Judaism or Christianity, or not, like Buddhism or Daoism. In this primitive usage, one could speculate that the term might have meant that there was more to existence than “met the eye.” There was overarching order where chaos and disorder may have seemed to reign; there was thus justice where only brute power or chance ruled the scene; there was thus some ultimate purpose and structure to existence, despite how much the opposite seemed the truth of things.