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CASTE IN QUESTION: Identity or Hierarchy? Edited by Dipankar Gupta. New Delhi (India), Thousand Oaks (CA), London (UK): Sage Publications. 2004. xxi, 225pp. (Tables.) US$49.95, cloth. ISBN0-7619-3324-7.
The hierarchical nature of the caste system is simultaneously its most widely known characteristic and its most disputed one. While some degree of hierarchy between castes, conveyed in the terms "upper" and "lower" castes, seems to be accepted as conventional wisdom, a large volume of scholarly work is devoted to either questioning the hierarchy altogether or advocating a nuanced view of hierarchy. Much of this literature has as its focal point Louis Dumont's seminal work Homo Hierarchicus (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980, English edition, revised), which suggests a universally valid, linear hierarchy along the scale of ritual purity/pollution.
Dipankar Gupta has been engaged in formulating a critique of Dumont's linear world view for some time. In this collection, he argues that in contrast to Dumont's view of caste hierarchy, "we now have a plethora of assertive caste identities, each privileging an angular hierarchy of its own," and thus "... there is hardly any unanimity on ranking between jatis" (p. x). He suggests that...