Jean-Paul Dumont is a Clarence J. Robinson Professor of Anthropology. Clarence J. Robinson Professors are outstanding scholars who teach undergraduate studies and focus on teaching and studying broad and fundamental intellectual issues. He trained in Anthropology in France under Calude Levi-Strauss. He later earned his doctorate degree from the University of Pittsburgh. He became part of the faculty of the George Mason University in 1998 and later became one of the Clarence J. Robinson Professors. His research interests are focused on ethnographic representation and interpretation with his ethnographic research in the central Philippines. His current research focuses on the peasant cultures of the Philippine lowlands. He specializes on anthropology, ethnography and cultural studies.

The Headman and I illuminates the process by which the ethnographer falls through the looking glass into another culture. This close and insightful study of the Panare Indians of Venezuelan Guiana is a remarkable combination of hard ethnographic data and philosophical inquiry. Dumont is explicit in precisely the area where most ethnography is inarticulate--the concrete details of the field experience. The result is a major contribution to the methodology of anthropological fieldwork as he sought to answer one question: "Who (or what) was I for the Panare?" Dumont's engagingly personal account of the Panare view of the ethnographer and his culture centers around dialogue and interaction rather than one-sided displays of data and conclusions.