Arjun Appadurai: Putting Hierarchy in Its Place. Critical summary
Appadurai’s text traces the genealogy of Dumont’s concept of ’hierarchy’ as the defining moment of the Indian caste system as expounded in Homo Hierarchicus (1970). The title of the paper is, of course, an allusion to, as well as an appropriation of, the old colonial clichée about ’putting the native in his place’ - a set expression confirming the colonial hierarchy.
A.’s critique comes in three steps: First, the concept of the native as the object of anthropological study (immobile, transfixed, ’confined’ to a place and a ’mode of thought’ as opposed to the mobile ethnographer and the cosmopolitan in general); second, a tendency in anthropological writing to a) essentialize (’hierarchy is the spirit of India’), b) exoticize (’they differ from us’), c) totalize (’India is all about hierarchy , hierarchy permeates every aspect of Indian society/culture’); third, the way in which concepts like ’hierarchy’, ’shame and honor’ etc., which are seen to be the essence of particular places are constructed on the basis of a number of observations made in totally different places. This last point is obviously not an argument against taking into consideration ethnographical data (in the widest sense) from different cultural and geographical settings in order to arrive at valid conclusions: a juxtaposition with findings made in different places should be a legitimate way of enhancing one’s understanding of one’s own topic of research, checking the available data for parallels, analogies and differences. The fallacy consists of combining the conclusions gained from such research into a single concept - ’hierarchy’ - and ’putting it in its (imagined) place’, fixing it as a tag on a region which is imagined as a discreet cultural unit.
The main criticism, however, concerns the way in which these ideas become hegemonic, and get to dominate anthropological discourse.
The title of A.’s article thus becomes not just a double, but so to speak a triple entendre on the colonial phrase quoted above: first, the native (the Indian) is being put in his place (India, hierarchy), secondly, the concept of hierarchy is assigned to a cultural region (India) - a concept which in its turn is put into its place (or places) by A. when he ’reveals’ its genealogy.