Showing papers in "Contributions to Indian Sociology in 2001"

Low caste but middle-class: Some religious strategies for middle- class identification in Hyderabad:

Abstract: This article examines some religious means that socio-economically mobile low caste families use to identify themselves as 'middle-class people' in an urban setting in the south Indian city of Hyderabad. Special attention is paid to the situation of ex-Untouchables whose religious strategies, through partly specific to them, nevertheless reveal tendencies that are general among low caste Hindus in urban areas. The portrait of an ex-Untouchable family in Hyderabad and the arrangement of the ritual of Sri Satya Narayana wratam illuminates the Hindu religious strategies that they consider pivotal in the acquisition of social respectability. Although low caste middle-class people share certain of the cultural concep tions of the wider Indian (and Hindu) scene, they interpret ritualistic Hinduism in a non hegemonic frame, emphasising features that may differ radically from the ideologically dominant version of cultural competence. The article shows that new middle-class people seek to create a 'middle-class Hi...

Common property, forest management and the Indian Himalaya

Abstract: This article examines contributions to the literature on common property regimes that govern natural resources. The article also seeks to analyse the relevance of this literature for resource management in the Indian Himalaya. Writings on common property have been instrumental in developing a theoretical justification for decentralisation of envir onmental policies around the world. Nonetheless, they have been relatively inattentive to issues of power and the larger socio-political context within which most common prop erty regimes are embedded. Research in the Himalayan mountains not only stands to benefit from using theoretical approaches based on studies of common property, but can also enrich the study of common property because of the long history of commons management in the region.

Public genealogies: Documents, bodies and nations in Anglo-Indian railway family histories:

Abstract: This article argues for an approach to archives and documents that focusses on their material effects. It traces the impact of the East Indian Railway Nationality Files on the intimate stories of f...

A Uniform Customary Code? Marital breakdown and women's economic entitlements in rural Bijnor

Abstract: Drawing on research in rural Bijnor district, western Uttar Pradesh, this article explores some of the implications of the Shah Bano controversy in the mid-1980s, and of the associated communalisat...

Caste and the colonial state: Mallahs in the census:

Abstract: The central problematic of this essay, the process of caste identity formation, is explored here with a focus on the fishing and riverfaring group of castes, the Mallah or Nishad, of the Bhojpuri-speaking region in eastern UP and Bihar. The process is analysed with reference to different sources of information, both colonial and post-colonial, which include the census, the system of scheduling whereby the Mallah/Nishad was labelled as both a criminal tribe and a backward caste, and finally, through voices from within the community. The essay is concerned with both the emergence of the Nishad identity as a result of and in reaction to the interventions of the colonial state and with the effects of the latter on identity-formation in the post-colonial era.

The encounter of sociology and women's studies: Questions from the borders

Abstract: L'A. retrace l'emergence, depuis les annees 1970, des etudes sur les femmes, en tant que discipline academique en Inde. Considerant les dynamiques multiples et heterogenes des etudes sur les femmes en tant que champ intellectuel, elle centre son analyse sur les pressions et demandes nouvelles pour la production de connaissances sur les femmes et le genre. Elle examine particulierement le glissement des recherches anterieures sur le statut de la femme et l'education des femmes vers l'interface entre feminisme et institutions universitaires. Evaluant le traitement des questions feminines dans les differentes disciplines des sciences sociales, elle suggere que l'interface entre la sociologie et les etudes sur les femmes a ete peu productif et dommageable a ces deux disciplines. Elle discute notamment le traitement des questions feminines a l'interieur de la sociologie ainsi que les consequences pour la politique feministe de l'absence d'une perspective sociologique pertinente dans les etudes sur les femmes.

Social and political dominance in western UP: A response to Sudha Pai

Abstract: In our critique of a recent article by Sudha Pai (CIS vol. 34, no. 2) we argue that she provides inadequate evidence to support her case that there has been a dramatic change in dominance relationships in western UP. We identify problems of evidence in her claims about the significance of rising education of Chamars, and in the consequences of the changes that have taken place. We also suggest that her account of dominance needs to consider the erstwhile dominant as well as the dominated, and that she ignores evidence of the extent to which previously dominant castes have merely changed the ways in which they enforce compliance when necessary. Her evidence of change is inadequate: she provides perceptions of changes instead. We also question the generalisability of her predictions, and use data from our own ongoing research in Bijnor district to suggest a modified picture of increasing access to schooling among the Chamars of western UP, and its likely effects.

State legitimacy and social suffering in a modern epidemic: A case study of dengue haemorrhagic fever in Delhi:

Abstract: Public health emergencies like epidemic outbreaks provide a challenge to the legitimacy of the state as the mechanism for the maintenance of public order in modern societies. Official agencies, und...

The burden of history: Obstacles to power sharing in Sri Lanka

Abstract: For around seventeen centuries the Sinhalese have sustained a historical consciousness through oral and written modes of transmission. These vamsa traditions emphasise the moment of civilisational state formation through the founding father, Vijaya, a tale that enters modern history texts and thus receives the status of fact. This tale enters contemporary verbal battles of legitimation between Sinhalese and Tamil protagonists. A recent article by Wickramasinghe indicates how the Vijaya story can be a central pillar in the refusal to countenance devolution of power to the Tamils in the north-east. His unelaborated reference to Vijaya indicates how the belief in the Sinhalese claims to original possession operates in semi-subterranean ways among those extremists who deny the need for autonomy on various constitutional grounds in the vocabulary of democracy. One such is the Sinhala Urumaya (Heritage) Party that emerged in mid-2000 and around which many lines of opposition to the government's Devolution Package coalesced. Despite its poor electoral performance in October 2000, the SU represents a powerful strand of thinking that bears the values associated with the revolution of 1956, values which are now ingrained in all the Sinhala-dominated parties.

Producing locality: space, houses and public culture in a Hindu festival in Malaysia

Abstract: Victor Turner's concepts of liminality and communitas have left an indelible mark on anthropological studies on ritual. Basically, Turner argued that there is a dialectic between the mediacy of social structure (characterised as a 'closed society' or 'status system') and the immediacy of communitas (an 'open society'). This article argues for a more fluid understanding of these kinds of social processes, drawing from Arjun Appadurai's char acterisation of a 'locality'as a 'complex phenomenological quality, constituted by a series of links between the sense of social immediacy, the technologies of interactivity and the relativity of contexts'. This is illustrated through the ethnographic description and analy sis of a local annual Hindu festival in an urban squatter settlement in Malaysia. While the mythic territoriality of the female deity primarily engenders symbolic boundary-making and life-sustaining activities, it also constitutes other layers of social spaces for organ isers and participants alike. Individual and corporate agendas overlap and criss-cross one another. Local knowledge is both parochial and constituted within the wider religious, social and political landscapes. Altogether, these kinds of activities contribute towards a 'public culture' of Hinduism in Malaysia, characterised both by differentiation and the semblance of communitas.

Economics and other social sciences: An inevitable divide?

Abstract: L'A. propose quelques reflexions sur les relations entre la science economique et les autres sciences sociales. Selon lui, l'opposition entre la science economique et les autres disciplines n'est fondee que partiellement sur des faits. Il soutient qu'elle repose largement sur des idees fausses reciproques qu'il se propose de mettre en evidence. Il evalue ensuite les avantages d'une cooperation interdisciplinaire

Book reviews and notices : F.G. BAILEY, The civility of indifference: On domesticating ethnicity. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996. xvi + 184 pp. Plates, notes, references, index. Rs. 445 (hardback)

Abstract: was not disruptive and violent, and explains this deviance in terms of the organisational and social pluralism of the Dravidian parties. The two types of populism had distinct consequences for social pluralism: if the assertive populism of the DMK gave greater cadre autonomy to its supporters, the paternalist populism of the ADMK made them more dependent on the party leader’s patronage. However, in both cases, social pluralism and the increased representation of newly emerging groups encouraged stability, contained any potential for violent ethnic conflict, and also kept the forces of Hindu revivalism at bay. Tamil exceptionalism leads the author to argue that social forces such as these, which promote a tolerant conception of cultural identity, are better at combating violent religious revivalism than ’those that assert culturally vacuous notions of Indian citizenship’ (p. 326). The onus of making ethnic forces more tolerant is placed on citizens committed to pluralist democracy, who should mobilise autonomously of states and parties, though still engaging with these. While the objective could not be worthier, there is a certain dissonance between the bulk of the book and its last few pages. The political universe of the book is Tamil Nadu, and its main actors are political parties. It is not easy to see how this otherwise compelling argument can be transposed onto the much larger, and more complex, political universe of the Indian nation. Moreover, transferring the initiative from the political parties to citizens is not something logically implied by the

Book reviews and notices : PETER VAN DER VEER and HARTMUT LEHMANN, eds., Nation and religion: Perspectives on Europe and Asia. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999. vii + 231 pp. Map, notes, bibliography, index. $55.00 (hardback):

Abstract: social welfare infrastructure will be threatened by the increased morbidity and mortality associated with the epidemic. Here, the authors make the point that while prime-age adult mortality is increasing as a result of HIV infection, few of these deaths are recorded or even recognised as HIV-related. Yet, because prime-age adult mortality rates are normally low, relatively small increases in absolute numbers of deaths produce relatively large changes in these rates, and make clear the importance of planning for impact alleviation for the millions