Louis Dumont Fund

Aid fund for research in social anthropology

Call closed

Closed since

31 January 2024

The Fondation Maison des Sciences de l'Homme (FMSH) manages and awards various prizes funded by donations from late scientists, as well as the direct support of associations, who approach the FMSH secure in the knowledge that their contributions will be handled with the utmost rigour and the recipients carefully selected.

Created in 1988, the Louis Dumont Prize for research awards one-off grants each year to support field research projects.

The prize is aimed at young ethnologists and anthropologists, holding and MA, a PhD or a post doctorate, without any condition of nationality but based and enrolled in France.

The candidates must have studied a course in anthropology before.

The support of the fund is only for social anthropology projects, encouraging the collection of a descriptive material and the development of a monographic perspective.

The candidates may be contacted for a personal interview.

The fund provides additional resources to the laureate, for transportation and/or accommodation costs on the terrain. This aid is worth between 2000 and 3000 euros.

Le jury du prix est composé de :

Jean-Claude Galey (EHESS), Président
Catherine Capdeville-Zeng (INALCO)
Vincent Descombes (EHESS)
Caterina Guenzi (EHESS)
André Itéanu (CNRS,EPHE)
Ismaël Moya (CNRS)

Louis Dumont

Louis Dumont (1911–1998) was a French anthropologist specialising in India. His research also involved comparative analyses in relation to Western societies.

Dumont’s work spans all areas of the social sciences: philosophy, history, law, political sciences, sociology, and anthropology, to which he made major contributions during his lifetime, offering a new way of understanding the many faces of modernity.

Louis Domont was a student of Marcel Mauss at the Institute of Ethnology. In 1945, he joined the Musée National des Arts et des Traditions Populaires where he continued his education and research activities.

In 1948, he left for South India to study the Pramalai Kallar society. He then went on to write his doctoral thesis, which was published in 1957, ‘Une sous-caste de l’Inde du Sud’ (A South Indian subcaste). Before his departure for Asia, Dumont had written a monograph entitled ‘La Tarasque,’ a Provençal legend that he analysed through the lens of local religious practices, which he published in 1951.

From 1951 to 1955, Dumont taught at the Institute of Social & Cultural Anthropology in Oxford. In 1995, he became head of the École Pratique des Hautes Études in Paris where he created, in collaboration with the economist Daniel Thorner, the Centre for Indian Studies, and founded the journal Contributions to Indian sociology with D. Podock.