Choose one as the essay title:
- What makes the village an important place and focus of anthropological research in South Asia today?
- Is the caste system a product of colonial rule; caste a colonial invention?
- Do kings matter more that priests in shaping Indian society?
- Is the distinction between status and power (Brahman purity and Kshatriya power) an insight or an obstacle to the anthropological study of South Asian society?
- What is the jajmanisystem, why is it controversial?
- (please make sure you look at Dumont and Dirks)
Key Readings
Dirks, N. 1987. The hollow crown: ethnohistory of an Indian kingdom. Cambridge: Univ. Press, pp. 3-10. https://contentstore.cla.co.uk/secure/link?id=50122b40-d9c3-e811-80cd-005056af4099
Daniel, E.V. 1984 Fluid signs: being a person the Tamil way. Berkeley: U. California Press. Ch 2. https://contentstore.cla.co.uk/secure/link?id=d11e0a07-d6c3-e811-80cd-005056af4099
Dumont,L. 1980 Homo Hierarchicus: the caste system and its implications. Chicago: Chicago University press. Chapters: Ch 2 From System to Structure: the pure and the impure https://contentstore.cla.co.uk/secure/link?id=c0a5322b-d8c3-e811-80cd-005056af4099
Mines, Diane 2005 Fierce Gods. Inequality, Ritual, and the Politics of Dignity in a South Indian Village. Indiana University Press Chapter 3 ‘The Ash Theft’
https://contentstore.cla.co.uk/secure/link?id=af4c3b7d-dbc3-e811-80cd-005056af4099
Fuller, C. 1989. Misconceiving the grain heap: a critique of the concept of the ‘Indian Jajmani system’. In J.Parry and M.Bloch (eds.) Money and the morality of exchange. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://contentstore.cla.co.uk/secure/link?id=991e8000-dec3-e811-80cd-005056af4099
Further readings (* particularly recommended)
Meanings of ‘the village’
* Gupta, Dipankar 2005. Whither the Indian village: culture and agriculture in ‘rural’ India. Economic and Political Weekly 40 (8) (Feb. 19-25, 2005), pp. 751-758 OR Gupta, Dipankar 2009.The Caged Phoenix: Can India Fly Stanford: Stanford University Press. Ch 6: The Hollowed Village; 7: Changing Agriculture; 8: From Village to Vicinage.
Mines, Diane, & N. Yazgi. 2010. Village matters: relocating villages in the contemporary anthropology of India. Oxford University Press. Chapter 1. Do Villages Matter
Lambert, Helen. 1996. Caste, gender and locality in rural Rajasthan. In C.J. Fuller (ed.) Caste today. New Delhi: Oxford University Press
The Jajmani system
* Good, A. 1982. The Actor and the Act: Categories of Prestation in South India. Man (N.S.) 17:23-41.
* Mayer, P. 1993. Inventing village tradition: the late 19th century origins of the north Indian ‘jajmani system’. Modern Asian Studies 27, pp.357-395
* Mines, Diane 2005 Fierce Gods. Inequality, Ritual, and the Politics of Dignity in a South Indian Village. Indiana University Press. Chapter 3 ‘The Ash Theft’
Pocock, D.F. 1962. Notes on Jajmani Relationships. Contributions to Indian Sociology. 6, 78-95.
*Raheja, G.1990. Centrality, mutuality and hierarchy: shifting aspects of inter-caste relationships in north India. In India through Hindu categories (Contribution to Indian Sociology, Occasional Studies 5) (ed.) M.Marriott. New Delhi: Sage.
Wiser, W.H. 1936 The Hindu jajmani system. Lucknow: Lucknow Pubishing House
Village India, development state and the ‘anti-Orientalist challenge’
Dewey, Clive 1972. Images of the village community: a study in Anglo-Indian thought. Modern Asian Studies 6 (3), 291-328
* Inden, Ronald 1990 Imagining India. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Introduction and Chapters 1 and 4.
Ludden, D. 1993. Orientalist empiricism: transformations of colonial knowledge. In Orientalism and the post-colonial predicament: perspectives on South Asia. (eds.) C.A.Breckenridge and P. van der Veer. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press
Mosse, D. 1999. ‘Colonial and contemporary ideologies of community management: the case of tank irrigation development in south India.’ Modern Asian Studies. 33, 2, 303-338.
Sinha, Subir 2008. Lineages of the Developmentalist State: Transnationality and Village India, 1900–1965. Comparative Studies in Society and History 50: 57-90.
Caste, theory and history –critical debates
*Appadurai, A. 1986. Is homo hierarchicus? American Ethnologist 13 (4) 745-62
Bayly, Susan 1999. Caste, society and politics in India from the 18th century to the modern age. Cambridge: University Press. (esp. Chapter 2 ‘Brahman Raj’)
* Benjamin Lindt 2014. Towards a comprehensive model of caste. Contributions to Indian Sociology 47 (1): 85-112.
* Berreman. 1971. The Brahmanical View of Caste. Contributions to Indian Sociology (N.S.) 5, 16-23.
Burghart, R 1978. Hierarchical models of the Hindu social system. Man 13 (4): 519-536
* Burghart, R. 1990 Ethnographers and their local counterparts in India. In Localising strategies; regional traditions of ethnographic writing (ed. R.Fardon) Edinburgh, Scottish Academic press, 260-78.
Cohn, B. 1987. The census, social structure and objectification. In An anthropologist among historians and other essays. Oxford University Press (ch.7)
Das, V. 1995 Critical Events: anthropological perspectives on contemporary India, Delhi: OUP (Chapter 1 The anthropological discourse on India: reason and its Other).
Dirks, N. 1987. The hollow crown: ethnohistory of an Indian kingdom. Cambridge: Univ. Press.
* Dirks, N. B.2001. Castes of mind: colonialism and the making of modern India. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Chapters 1 and 2.
* Dirks, N.B. 1990. The original caste: power, history and hierarchy in South Asia. In India through Hindu categories (ed) M.Marriott. New Delhi: Sage. (Also in Contribution to Indian Sociology. 1989 vol 23: 59-78)
* Dumont,L. 1980 Homo Hierarchicus: the caste system and its implications. Chicago: Chicago University press. Esp. Chapters: Introduction, 2 and 3
C.J. Fuller (ed.) 1996. Caste today. New Delhi: Oxford University Press
* Lindt, Benjamin 2014. Towards a comprehensive model of caste. Contributions to Indian Sociology 47 (1): 85-112.
* Marriott McKim & Inden, R. 1976. ‘Toward an ethnosociology of South Asian caste systems’, in (ed) K David, The New Wind, Mouton, Hague/Paris.
Marriott McKim (ed). 1990. Chapter 1: ‘Constructing an Indian ethnosociology’. In India through Hindu categories, Sage Publications: New Delhi. Also available in Contributions to Indian Sociology January 1989; 23 (1). See also the debate that followed in the June 1990 issue of Contributions to Indian Sociology 24 (2)
Mines, Diane 2005. Fierce gods: Inequality, ritual, and the politics of dignity in a South Indian village. Indiana University Press
Quigley, Declan 1994. Is a theory of caste still possible. In Searl-Chatterjee, Mary & Ursula Sharma. Contextualising caste: post-Dumontian approaches. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
* Raheja, G.G 1988. India: caste, kingship and dominance reconsidered. Annual Review of Anthropology 17: 497-522 (A helpful review of the literature on caste and kingship)
Roberts, Nathaniel [2015] Setting caste back on its feet. Review of “Beyond caste: identity and power in South Asia, past and present” by Sumit Guha, Anthropology of this Century 13, May 2015. http://aotcpress.com/articles/setting-caste-feet/
Searl-Chatterjee, Mary & Ursula Sharma. 1994. Contextualising caste: post-Dumontian approaches. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Quigley, Declan 1994. Is a theory of caste still possible. In Searl-Chatterjee, Mary & Ursula Sharma. Contextualising caste: post-Dumontian approaches. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Social change and village study
Breman, Jan 2007. The poverty regime in village India: half a century of work and life at the bottom of the rural economy in South Gujarat. Oxford: University press
Clark-Decès, Isabelle 2007. The Encounter Never Ends: A Return to the Field of Tamil Rituals. New York: State University of New York Press.
Epstein, T.S. 2007. Poverty, Caste and Migration in South India. In Moving Out of Poverty (Vol 1): Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Mobility (eds) D. Narayan and P. Petesch, 199-226. Basingstoke, UK and New York: Palgrave Macmillan; Washington DC: The World Bank.
Gold, Ann Grodzins. 2009. Tasteless Profits and Vexed Moralities: Assessments of the Present in Rural Rajasthan. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 15 (2), 365–385.
Gupta, Akhil 1998. Postcolonial developments: agriculture in the making of modern India. Duke University press
Harriss, J. 1982. Capitalism and peasant farming: agrarian structure and ideology in northern Tamil Nadu. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Mines, Diane, & N. Yazgi. 2010. Village matters: relocating villages in the contemporary anthropology of India. Oxford University Press
Mosse, David 2012. The saint in the banyan tree. Berkeley: Univ. California Press (Chs 3 & 7)
Orientalism and after
Cohn, B. S. 1987 Notes on the history of the study of Indian society and culture, in An Anthropologist among the Historians, and other essays, Oxford University Press (Chapter7).
Gupta, Akhil 1998. ‘Developmentalism, state power and local politics in Alipur’, Chapter 2 In Post colonial developments: agriculture in the making of modern India. Durham, London: Duke University Press.106-153.
Inden, Ronald 1990 Imagining India. Oxford: Basil Blackwell
O’Hanlon R & Washbrook D 1992 ‘After orientalism: culture, critics and politics in the Third World’. Comparative Studies in Society & History. Vol. 34, No. 1 (Jan., 1992), pp.140-167