Louis Dumont, a comparação das sociedades e o diálogo cultural

Abstract

This article is a call to reread Louis Dumont, adressed to all anthropologists, whatever their area of study. Its aim is to reaffirm the importance of the general holistic method proposed by Dumont for the discipline of sociology-anthropology. The following issues are broached: the need to distinguish a methodological holism which can be applied to the study of all societies from the temptation to establish a great divide between those societies that might be classed as "holistic" from those that might not; the historical links between Louis Dumont and the study of Oceanic societies; the dualism inherent to the observation that reflects the position of the anthropologist and leads to the distinction that Dumont called (with a somewhat inadequate vocabulary) the "ideology" and its "residue". At the end of the exposition, examples are drawn from the Polynesian societies of Samoa, which illustrate the methodological arguments developed in the article.