Philippe Sagant, to whom this issue of Ateliers d’anthropologie is dedicated, played a part in that pioneering moment, taking up the ethnological profession after the Algerian War. His works combine the rigors of ethnographic collection—something that needed to be done in its entirety in Nepal—with reflection that goes beyond regional cultural or religious divisions, to develop an anthropology of marginal societies caught between centralising forces in which the political and religious spheres are inseparable. They show the reflections pursued in the Himalayan area and in the ethnological discipline, from the time of Philippe Sagant’s training at the Musée de l’Homme and his participation in the RCPs of the 1960s and in institutions created at that time, to his comparative ambitions revolving around an archaic power model of “the gods’ chosen one”.