Description
Book SynopsisRecent theoretical and methodological innovations in the anthropological analysis of South Asian societies have introduced distinctive modifications in the study of Indian social structure and social change. This book, reporting on twenty empirical studies of Indian society conducted by outstanding scholars, reflects these trends not only with reference to Indian society itself, but also in terms of the relevance of such trends to an understanding of social change more generally.
The contributors demonstrate the adaptive changes experienced by the studied groups in particular villages, towns, cities, and regions. The authors view the basic social units of joint family, caste, and village not as structural isolates, but as intimately connected with one another and with other social units through social and cultural networks of various kinds that incorporate the social units into the complex structure of Indian civilization. Within this broadened conception of social structure,
Table of Contents
I: Caste and Social Structure; 1: Notes on the History of the Study of Indian Society and Culture; 2: Family, J?ti, Village; 3: A Comparative Analysis of Caste: The United States and India 1; II: The Structure of Intercaste Relations; 4: Caste Regions of the North Indian Plain; 5: Toward A Grammar of Defilement in Hindu Sacred Law; 6: Caste Ranking and Food Transactions: A Matrix Analysis; 7: Caste and World View: The Application of Survey Research Methods; III: Is the Caste System Changing?; 8: Mobility in the Caste System; 9: Mobility in the Nineteenth-Century Caste System; 10: The Politics of Untouchability: A Case from Agra, India; IV: Caste in Politics, Economics, and Law; 11: Structures of Politics in the Villages of Southern Asia; 12: Caste and Merchant Communities; 13: Changing Legal Conceptions of Caste; V: The Joint Family, Its Structures and Changes; 14: Region, Caste, And Family Structure; 15: Chitpavan Brahman Family Histories: Sources for a Study of Social Structure and Social Change in Maharashtra; 16: Time-Dimension and Structural Change in an Indian Kinship System: A Problem of Conceptual Refinement; 17: 17. The Indian Joint Family In Modern Industry; VI: Language and Social Structure; 18: Social Dialect and Semantic Structure in South Asia; 19: The Structure of Variation: a Study in Caste Dialects; 20: Occupation and Residence in Relation to Dharwar Dialects
