Informal Session: Dumont in the Pacific
Organizers: Serge Tcherkézoff and Joel Robbins

"Dumont in the Pacific" is a brief title for "Are Louis Dumont's Models Useful for Ethnography in Oceania?" In the e-mail exchanges before the Canberra meeting, we had about 10-12 expressions of strong interest. The session had been planned initially by Joel Robbins and Serge Tcherkézoff. Joel could not come to Canberra, but will be at the next session. We had asked Mark Mosko if he could help. He did with all his enthusiasm, and Serge had asked him to stay with us for next sessions. After the session, he agreed. So next session will be organized by the three of us. We were quite happy to see that about 30 people came to the session. We asked each to present his or her interest. About half said that they came to learn more about Dumont's work, and that they do not plan to contribute a paper but will listen to the discussions as students interested by the theme. The other half committed to give a paper. The session was introduced by three short presentations, given by Serge, Mark and Joel (Serge read Joel's introduction). We had discussed the varied aspects of Dumont's theories and models and agreed that we will focus on the main question: are some (or all) of Dumont's proposals useful for Oceanist anthropologists, even if Dumont's theories were produced either as an outcome of his work in India or of his broad comparative ideas about the distinction between modern vs. non-modern, individualist vs. holistic societies, etc. Regarding questions of status (hierarchy), Dumont's models might be applied to Polynesian hierarchies of statuses; there are some applications to Melanesian cases of status and levels of ceremonial exchanges--de Coppet was one main proponent of this kind of application--but also the whole question of Pacific societies in their contact with the Western world ("globalization," etc.). Are the India vs. West oppositions that Dumont formulated in various ways useful for this question? Everyone agreed to meet as a working session in Santa Cruz, with a commitment to give a paper and a detailed abstract by November 2008