• Media type: E-Article
  • Title: Totalization and detotalization : Alternatives to hierarchy and individualism : Alternatives to hierarchy and individualism
  • Contributor: Rio, Knut M.; Smedal, Olaf H.
  • Published: SAGE Publications, 2008
  • Published in: Anthropological Theory, 8 (2008) 3, Seite 233-254
  • Language: English
  • DOI: 10.1177/1463499608093813
  • ISSN: 1463-4996; 1741-2641
  • Origination:
  • Footnote:
  • Description: <jats:p>This article marks an effort to extend Louis Dumont's concept pair of hierarchy and individualism towards a more realistic understanding of social formations. Dumont's work is reviewed along with his critics, and through a survey of contemporary ethnography a move towards a concept of totalization is suggested. It is argued that a view of totalization and detotalization provides a vocabulary for a re-establishment of the social for the discipline of anthropology.</jats:p>