If we apply Dumont’s ideas to Ethnosociology, we get the following picture.
The holistic society described by Dumont relates to what we called the ethnos and narod/laos. For the ethnos, integrity (Holism) is maximal and absolute, and hierarchy is as yet free of stratification and power relation.
The narod/laos is a differentiated, stratified, and polyethnic society, based on the visualization and internalization of the transcendent in the form of a socio-political model. It is not by accident that so much attention is paid in this kind of society to religious structures. Here Holism is subject to a certain layering (into castes, estates, etc.) and besides a purely status-based hierarchy (the domination of the sacred, shamanism), a hierarchy of power (a system of subordination and domination) also takes shape.
Individualistic, economic, egalitarian society is civil society, both in its early phase (national states), and in its normatively “ideal” phase (global society). The transition from holistic society (narod) to the individualistic society (civil society) occurred in Europe (and Dumont shows in detail the nuances of this process), but did not occur in India. Hence, we can study society as narod not only in history, but in our time as a self-sufficient social and political system, placed alongside modern and civil society.
Moreover, Dumont proposes to reject European Ethnocentrism (he calls it “Sociocentrism”) and to recognize the equal rights of holistic and individualistic social models as features of different societies and cultures at different times. If we judge by the length of historical existence and even by the number of modern members, then holistic societies are a much more frequent phenomenon, while the individualism of contemporary Europe will seem like an insignificant, but aggressive and pretentious anomaly. Dumont believes that an authentically sociological and scientific approach is one allows individualistic society to be described in terms of the criteria of Holism while describing holistic society with the help of the apparatus of individualistic ideology and methodology. After thoroughly researching Indian society (holistic, traditional), Dumont himself acted in this way, studying concurrently the man of hierarchy (Homo hierarchicus, the norm for traditional society) and the man of equality (Homo aequalis, the standard for contemporary Western society).
For Ethnosociology Louis Dumont and his sociological and anthropological theories are of central significance, since they render fundamental the polycentric approach to diverse societies, on which Ethnosociology is based.
Georges Dumézil: Trifunctional Theory
Georges Dumézil (1898–1986), a first-rate historian of religion, a structuralist, and a linguist, can be associated entirely with Ethnosociology, since his works are devoted predominantly to the study of the social stratification of Indo-European narods, including those of the most ancient times. Dumézil was under the influence of the ideas of Durkheim and collaborated closely with Marcel Granet.
Dumézil engaged in ethnographic fieldwork in Turkey and the Caucasus, learning about the ethnic groups of the Turks, Ubykh, Abkhazians, Armenians, and especially the Ossetians, whose ancient culture he was the first to draw to the attention of European scholars.
Dumézil’s main ideas received the name “trifunctional theory.” According to Dumézil, the structure of the Nart Saga, preserved among a number of Caucasian narods and especially the Ossetians, led him to the creation of this theory. Ossetian society, originating in its roots from the Alan, Sarmatians, and Scythians, preserved a trifold structure, characteristic of ancient epics, according to which all members of society are divided into priests, soldiers, and cattle-breeders. This three-part model determines the structure of myths, religious rites, and socio-political arrangements. Starting from the Ossetian model, Dumézil carried out the colossal task of a comparative analysis of the mythologies and religions, along with the socio-political systems of ancient Indo-European ethnoses — Vedic Aryans, ancient Scythians, Sarmatians, Parthians, Romans, Greeks, Slavs, Celts, Germans, Hittites, etc. — and established that the three-part model is met with among practically all these ethnoses. The trifunctional approach was taken as a basis for the interpretation of many rituals, myths, chronicles, and religious doctrines. Thus, a functional connection between Indian Brāhmaṇas and Roman Flamens was established.277
Dumézil devoted separate works to the interpretation of German and ancient Roman mythology from the perspective of the trifunctional theory.278 , 279 The work The Gods of the Indo-Europeans summarizes this research.280
Dumézil belonged to the structuralist school of anthropology and the history of religion and was inclined to interpret historical chronicles as a form of the unfolding of mythological consciousness.281 This method received the name “anti-Euhemerism.”282 The ancient Greek philosopher Euhemerus had already proposed, in antiquity, the theory that histories and myths about the gods are recollections of real events and exploits, performed by people who acquired in the memory of others exaggerated, fantastic traits. Dumézil not only thought that this was not the case and that the myth was primary, but was also inclined to interpret a history about a series of historical actions as a special version of the exposition of myth in a historical form. He demonstrated this brilliantly in his works and explained it methodologically in in the comparative work Man’s Forgetting and the Honor of the Gods.283
Dumézil’s works are of great importance to Ethnosociology, both from the perspective of their comparative method, and because of the fundamental examination of the process of social stratification in ancient narods. More precisely, the themes he takes up relate to the form of society we call the “narod/laos” in an ethnosociological sense. Social stratification is a phenomenon that characterizes the first derivative of the ethnos, i.e., the narod. The isolation of the three-part model of society can refer only to the narod, since in the ethnos (in its pure form) social equality predominates and stratification is almost entirely absent. For the analysis of the laos and the processes of the appearance of states, religions, and civilizations as forms of the narod’s creative work, Dumézil’s instruments are optimal.
In his studies of tripartite religious and socio-political systems, Dumézil analyzed extensive mythological and historical material connected with the emergence of the dynasties, countries, and states of the Ancient World. Everywhere he found a constantly repeating theme, fundamental for the moment of the emergence of the narod/laos: war and the subsequent reconciliation between the brave warriors, the newcomers (who lack food, women, and wealth) and the settled, peace-loving local population, occupied with agriculture and possessing, on the contrary, an abundance of wealth and women. In the history of Rome this plot is repeated twice: first, in the case of Aeneas, who arrived from fallen Troy and came across the king of Latins, and later, in the case of Romulus, who entered into conflict (which was later replaced by peace) with the Sabine king, Titus Tatius. In India, among the Germanic narods, in the Ossetian and more broadly North Caucasian Nart Saga, among Iranians, and Greeks — everywhere we come across one and the same picture: the tripartite model is formed from the superimposition of allogeneic ethnoses (with clear nomadic and warlike traits), comprising the basis of the two higher functions (priests and warriors), onto a local population of an agrarian type. The third function (predominantly workers-peasants) correlates with a specific type of gods, rites, traits, symbols, economic practices, value attitudes, and characteristic features. Thus, Dumézil, aiming to track down far and wide the tripartite system, a feature, in his opinion, of Indo-European ethnoses, himself proved the composite character of this system, which consists of two heterogeneous mythological and symbolic complexes, one of which is inherent to warlike nomadic ethnoses and the other to peaceful agrarian ones. The gods and rites of the warriors form the content of the two higher functions; the gods and rites of the farmers, the third, lower function. These aspects render Dumézil’s works indispensable for Ethnosociology.
Algirdas Greimas: The Sociology of Meaning and Ethnosemiotic Objects
Lévi-Str
auss’ pupil Algirdas Greimas (1917–1992), who lived a significant part of his life in France, where he had a scientific career, was a structuralist philosopher, ethnologist, historian of religion, and specialist in Lithuanian mythology. Greimas specialized in structural linguistics and became the founder of (together with Roland Barthes) of semiotics in France (the Paris school of semiotics).284
Greimas occupied himself with the problem of meaning and the formalization of semantic constructs in systems of signs.285 He primarily applied this model to the analysis of mythologies, as well as literary texts, since, according to his theory, there is no fundamental difference between the structure of myth and the structure of contemporary literary, philosophical, or journalistic texts: they are resolved into a series of constant semantic and functional elements, in which there is revealed the figure of the actant (the acting person), his attributes, and actions, as well as a fixed number of possible relationships to other actants. He was influenced by the Soviet scholar Vladimir Propp’s structuralist analysis of tales, myths, and epics and by his model of detecting the constant semantic and functionalist structures of Russian fairy tales.
Greimas engaged in the reconstruction of Lithuanian folk mythology and devoted a separate work to this topic, Of Gods and Men: Studies in Lithuanian Mythology.286
In 1971 at the First International Congress for Ethnosociology he presented the paper Reflections on Ethnosemiotic Objects.287 Ethnosemiotic objects, according to Greimas, are myths, legends, traditions, and tales, which are distinguished by the fact that they do not center on the individual, as in Western European literature or in the autobiographical tradition of letters in the Modern Era, but on a system of semantic structures consisting of relations, functions, and ties. The term “ethnosemiotic object” is very significant for Ethnosociology, since it describes the ethnos as a semantic and meaning-constituting phenomenon. Emphasis of the impersonal structure of this object agrees with the main characteristic of the ethnos as a simple society with the maximal power of non-individual collective identity. Greimas’ definition shows that the ethnos can be considered as that which makes signs (words, figures, sounds, gestures, rituals) intelligible.
André Leroi-Gourhan: Technique and Ethnicity
Mauss’ pupil and Griaule’s successor at the Sorbonne, the French sociologist and anthropologist André Leroi-Gourhan (1911–1986) held evolutionary, materialistic positions and set at the center of his studies the problem of technique and its influence on the transformation of different types of society. His ethnological field studies were devoted to the archeology of the northern zone of the Pacific Ocean.288 Leroi-Gourhan’s ideas exerted a significant influence on the post-structuralist philosophers: Derrida, Deleuze, and Guattari.
In his works, Leroi-Gourhan correlates two fundamental elements, of principal importance for the establishment of society: technique and the ethnos. Leroi-Gourhan introduces the concept of “technical tendencies,” which, in his opinion, are connected with the objective and universal moment of transition from a quadruped animal to a vertical position.289 Owing to this transition, “yesterday’s monkeys” have their hands freed and increased attention is drawn to the face, which promotes the development of technical instruments, which find themselves in the hands “freed” from walking (Deleuze calls this “deterritorialization”), and the emergence of speech associated with a qualitative leap in the reinforcement of the role of the face [TN: in Russian, the same word means person and face] and one of its main organs, the mouth.290 Thus, language and technique prove to be closely connected and represent two sides of the technical tendencies.
According to Leroi-Gourhan, technical tendencies are universal for all humanity as a species. But they reveal themselves in a concrete ethnic environment. Consequently, the expression of universality is always particular, specific, and ethnic. Technique is something common, expressing itself through the ethnos as something particular.
The ethnos is the concretization of technique. The ethnos, according to Leroi-Gourhan, dwells in two environments simultaneously: an external one (natural, climatic, geographical) and an inner one (cultural, comprising the structure of the “common past”). Between the ethnos and the environment (both varieties) is an “interposed membrane” or “artificial envelope.”291 This just is the technical tendency as a universal, placed into the structure of the ethnos. The ethnos begins to apply this “membrane,” at first to the inner environment (to society itself), and then also to the external one, transforming its structure.
Step by step, ethnic societies transform in the direction of the development of technique, which increases their universality. At the limit of the ethnic as concrete must be completely forced out by the technical as universal. The meaning of history consists of this: the technical tendency gravitates towards autonomy and the replacement, by itself, of ethnic humanity. The limit of such a tendency is visualized conceptually in post-modernity and post-society. That is why Leroi-Gourhan’s ideas were picked up by the postmodern philosophers.
If we leave aside the topic of evolution, man’s origin from four-legged animals, and other forms of “progressivist” technological racism, characteristic of Leroi-Gourhan, then we can successfully apply his ethnotechnological theory to Ethnosociology.
The ethnos, as Leroi-Gourhan understands it, is the simplest society, maximally local and particular, i.e., minimally technical. We call this the “koineme.”
From this fundamental simplicity, we can lay down more and more complex derivatives. Complexity, differentiation, complexity and its degrees are the main indicators of the difference of the narod, nation, civil and global society, and finally, post-society from the ethnos. If we apply Leroi-Gourhan’s terminology, then we can identify the complexity and the process of complication, the raising of the level of differentiation, with the technical tendency and consider “technique” as a measure of determination of the sociological character of the society we are examining. The German ethnosociologists, chiefly Richard Thurnwald, acted approximately thus in their description of the process of the social transformations of ethnic society. But Thurnwald and Mühlmann ended their analysis at the level of the narod or laos. Thanks to Leroi-Gourhan, we can extend this logic to more complex, contemporary societies, right up to postmodernity.
The further society is from the ethnos, the more technical, universal, and effective it is, and the less human, cultural, and ecological. It proves to be a separate “membrane” from nature, culture, and their balanced synthesis, which comprises the essence of the ethnic habitation of being.
Roger Bastide: The Ethnosociological Labelling of Brazilian Society
The French sociologist Roger Bastide (1989–1974), who specialized in the detailed study of the societies of Brazil, made a serious contribution to Ethnosociology. From 1962 to 1974 he headed the journal L’Année Sociologique, founded by Durkheim. Moreover, he was the founder of the sociological tradition in Brazil itself, where he laid the basis for the Faculty of Sociology at the University of Sao Paulo.
Bastide studied the complex structure of contemporary Brazilian society, in which he traced the processes of acculturation, which, beginning with a core of Whites of Portuguese descent, spread to all other ethnic and social groups, refracting fantastically at each stage and begetting various forms of syncretism — Catholic European Portuguese culture crossed with the religious cults and magical rites of the local Native tribes, or the rituals and practices of the black population, delivered from Western Africa.
Bastide thought that Brazilian society was a unique example of the imposition of social stratification onto ethnic stratification. White Portuguese Catholics are the highest class in Brazil and are associated with the figures of the man/master; they are most often, large, average, and small landowners, under whose submission were found, up to the most recent times, mercenaries and hired hands (predominantly Natives), and black slaves entirely deprived of rights.292
The black-skinned population, descendants of imported
slaves from Africa, stands at the lowest level. However, Bastide noted, the Black population of Brazil and Latin America present on the whole a phenomenon entirely different, from an ethnosociological perspective, from that of the Black population in the US. North American farmers consistently and systematically separated the black-skinned slaves, brought in from the same place, over different estates, in order not to allow any communication between them and not to give grounds for rebellion and revolt. Slaves on the same plantation in the US almost always belonged to different ethnic groups, which caused them, over the course of a few generations, to forget their language, culture, rites, etc.; i.e., to lose their ethnic features and transition under compulsion to the English language (the language of the master), absorbing their masters’ culture. This was a strict form of acculturation, which destroyed the very core of the ethnos. In Brazil and Latin America, groups of imported slaves were most often settled together, which softened the acculturation and allowed them to preserve — albeit in part — ethnic, cultural, and religious attributes.293
Nevertheless, the lowest social class in Brazil was, in any case, clearly marked by skin color.
Natives, Mulattos, and Metis were spread throughout the middle stratum. They occupied the middle place, having preserved after colonization a certain degree of independence or else, by moving away to the inaccessible zones of the jungles of the Amazon and its inflows, they were saved by the practice of ethnic conservation.
Thus, Brazil’s social strata proved to be ethnically indexed, which is a graphic illustration of Ethnosociology as such.
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