Hierarchy

Knut M. Rio is Associate Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Bergen. He has conducted long-term fieldwork in Vanuatu in the western Pacific and published The Power of Perspective: Social Ontology and Agency on Ambrym Island, Vanuatu (Berghahn Books, 2007).

Acknowledgments



Chapter 1. Hierarchy and Its Alternatives: An Introduction to Movements of Totalization and Detotalization

Knut M. Rio and Olaf H. Smedal



Chapter 2. Conversion, Hierarchy, and Cultural Change: Value and Syncretism in the Globalization of Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity

Joel Robbins



Chapter 3. Gender and Value: Conceptualizing Social Forms on Ambrym, Vanuatu

Annelin Eriksen



Chapter 4. Can a Hierarchical Religion Survive without Its Center? Caodaism, Colonialism, and Exile

Janet Hoskins



Chapter 5. The Headless State in Inner Asia: Reconsidering Kinship Society and the Discourse of Tribalism

David Sneath



Chapter 6. The Perfect Sovereign: The Sacralized Power of the Ottoman Sultan

Kjetil Fosshagen



Chapter 7. Marriage, Rank, and Politics in Hawaii

Valerio Valeri



Chapter 8. Polynesian Conceptions of Sociality: A Dynamic Field of Hierarchical Encompassment

Ingjerd Hoëm



Chapter 9. On the Value of the Beast or the Limit of Money: Notes on the Meaning of Marriage Prestations among the Ngadha, Central Flores (Indonesia)

Olaf H. Smedal



Chapter 10. Hierarchy Is not Inequality-in Polynesia, for Instance

Serge Tcherkézoff



Chapter 11. Hierarchy and Power: A Comparative Attempt under Asymmetrical Lines

André Iteanu



Afterword: On Dumont's Relentless Comparativism

Frederick H. Damon



Notes on Contributors

Index