Showing papers on "Caste published in 1974"

The social behavior of the bees : a comparative study

Abstract: Although the honeybee is without doubt man's favorite social insect, and the most studied by him, there are twenty thousand other species of bees, many of which are social. This book is the first to offer a systematic account of social behavior in the entire super family "Apoidea." Of all the social insects, the various species of bees exhibit perhaps the broadest spectrum of social behavior, including intermediate stages which are scarce or totally extinct in other groups; in this respect the bees are particularly appropriate subjects for evolutionary study.With the aid of more than 200 illustrations, Charles Michener characterizes and describes all levels of social organization in the bees from simple aggregations of solitary nests to elaborate, eusocial colonies. He reviews the entire repertoire of social behavior in bees and gives detailed attention to mechanisms of communication, division of labor, determination of sex and caste, maintenance and control of nest conditions, and organization of defense. In a major chapter the evolutionary context of the bee societies is extensively explored; the author examines the selective advantages and disadvantages entailed in evolving nonreproductive castes, the problem of multiple, independent origins of eusociaI behavior, and the question of direction in the evolution of social behavior. The final section is an account of the life history and behavioral attributes of each of the groups of social bees."

The myth of population control : family, caste, and class in an Indian village

Abstract: human population planning wikipedia human population planning is the practice of intentionally controlling the rate of growth of a human population historically human population planning has been implemented with the goal of increasing the rate of human population growth, the black irish myth dark fiber the idea of this study struck me six years ago after the first mention of the black irish as told to me in variant four of the myth the question of its origin meaning and purpose has haunted me ever since primarily due to my own irish heritage my mother s family name is kelly and extended residence in spain, there is no caste system in vedas debunking the myth of vedic caste system important announcement in memory of our brave soldiers 40 martyrs of pulwama terror attack agniveer is making its ebooks, who was rama myth or historical hero we present an insightful article by eminent scholar of vedas and history sri rajveer arya aryarajveer gmail com written three years ago on the issue of sri rama being a myth or a historical legend its evident from the facts that sir rama was not only an indian legend but a global phenomenon, culture of nepal history people clothing traditions culture of nepal history people clothing traditions women beliefs food customs family ma ni, myth philosophy why the greeks parmenides greek history the origin of philosophy the attributes of mythic mythopoeic thought the pioneering work on this subject was the intellectual adventure of ancient man an essay on speculative thought in the ancient near east by henri frankfort h a frankfort john a wilson thorkild jacobsen and william a irwin university of chicago press 1946 1977 also once issued by penguin as before philosophy, urban culture sociology britannica com urban culture urban culture any of the behavioral patterns of the various types of cities and urban areas both past and present research on urban cultures naturally focuses on their defining institution the city and the lifeways or cultural forms that grow up within cities urban scholarship has steadily , culture of peru history people clothing traditions identification peru has a long and rich history the spanish conquistadors francisco pizarro c 1475 1541 and diego de almagro 1475 1538 received news of a mighty and rich empire lying just south of the present territory of central america, jstor viewing subject anthropology jstor is a digital library of academic journals books and primary sources, indian chinese japanese emperors mahapadma nanda became king of magadha and created what looks like the first empire in northern india while indian history begins with some confidence with the mauyras the nandas are now emerging into the light of history with a little more distinctness, nasa images discover ancient bridge between india and sri nasa images discover ancient bridge between india and sri lanka space images taken by nasa reveal a mysterious ancient bridge in the palk strait between india and sri lanka

The Caste System Upside Down, or The Not-So-Mysterious East

Abstract: It has been pointed out that in stratified societies, the evolutionary viability of the state rests in large part on the perfection of institutional structures that protect the ruling class from confrontation with coalitions of educated commoners. This paper makes use of historical materials from various parts of India, as well as contemporary material from one part of India, Tamilnadu, to examine the role of the caste system in preventing the formation of social classes with any commonality of interest or unity of purpose. Analyzing caste from the point of view of those at the bottom, the paper attempts to show that, like social stratification systems the world over, caste has functioned (and continues to function) as a very effective system of economic exploitation. In the context of India's determination to create a socialist state, it appears impossible to bring about significant social change without a breakdown of the barriers between poor untouchables and other poor people. The paper suggests that,...

Elite Politics in Rural India: Political Stratification and Political Alliances in Western Maharashtra

Abstract: A study of the system of political stratification and the pattern of political alliances in rural Western Maharashtra. Based on fieldwork in a large village, a nearby market town and taluka headquarters, and political institutions in the surrounding countryside, the first half of the book is a full examination of the phenomenon of regional dominance originally described by Adrian Mayer. The second part is a detailed study of the pattern of political alliances from village to district level. Dr Carter's central concern is with the manner in which the pattern of political alliances is shaped by political stratification. Tracing the relationships between these alliances and such factors as political stratification, political arenas, caste, class, and kinship, Dr Carter demonstrates that much Indian political behaviour which has been regarded as irrational or as a sign of an immature, tradition-bound and unstable system may be understood more usefully as a rational response to the conditions of political action in rural India.

Malaysia's Strategy for Survival

Abstract: M f ALAYSIA HAS MANY distinctions of which it is justly proud: its high rate of economic growth for instance, ample foreign reserves, the careful management of economic resources, or its controlled boldness in foreign relations. But one distinction it could well do without. Of all countries which became independent as the tide of i9th century colonialism receded in the middle of the 20th century, Malaysia is the most deeply riven by social cleavages. Other countries also have internal divisions-of race, caste, pigmentation, religion, language or economic status; India is a spider's web of these. But in no country are so many divisions so primordial as in Malaysia; in none is each division so deeply reinforced by all the others at once. Malaysia's problem, unlike India's, Indonesia's, Sri Lanka's, or even that of the whole Indo-China peninsula, is not simply to harmonise the subdivisions of any one of history's great cultural families. It is to harmonise three whole families themselves, the Malay, the Sinic, and the Indian-an immense task for a country of only eleven million people. Each family is vastly more distinctive from the other two, as a racial, religious or linguistic group, than the sub-divisions of the most variegated family are from each other. Therefore the cleavages in Malaysia affect all aspects of the Malaysian endeavour to forge a nation out of this immense variety. Economic development is affected no less than the evolution of the polity or the search for a stable cultural balance. Malaysia is therefore an ideal laboratory for a student of contemporary nation-building techniques; but for the nation-builder it can be a nightmare. Lately the complications have been in fascinating evidence, and the purpose of this article is to discuss some of them, first the electoral and then the developmental. As all discussion is influenced by a predisposition, I will confess mine at the outset: impressed as I am with the immensity of the problem, I am more impressed by the skill, firmness, flexibility and success with which it is being tackled; but one cannot fail to notice that some mistakes are also being made, which are unnecessary, avoidable and unfortunately serious. Both success and error can be clearly seen in the evolution and imple-

The social origins of a caste association, 1875–1905: The founding of the S.N.D.P. Yogam

Abstract: (1974). The social origins of a caste association, 1875–1905: The founding of the S.N.D.P. Yogam. South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies: Vol. 4, No. 1, pp. 39-59.

Caste by Association: The Gauḍa Sārasvata Brāhmaṇa Unification Movement

Abstract: T HE Samyukta Gauda Sarasvata Brahmana [GSB] Parisad was founded in I9IO by members of several historically related subcastes in western India. The association represented an attempt by men experiencing the insecurities of urban middle class life to obtain the presumed benefits of caste for themselves and their families through reintegration within a single structurally unified caste. They experimented also with the idea of caste as a means to mobilize rural kin and caste fellows in the quest for modernity. Although efforts to structurally amalgamate the subcastes through intermarriage and related ritual acts proved fruitless, the members of the Parisad did stimulate development of educational and economic institutions which supported their middle class aspirations. The problems of recruitment and the content of Parisad proceedings reveal considerable social and economic disparities among the GSB. This illustrates the inaccuracies of characterizing castes by reference only to those members who hold elite positions in public affairs. The Parisad ultimately atrophied after I917 although its related institutions have survived. Though the structural unity of caste was not obtained, a sense of GSB corporate identity did develop which ascribed to all members the achievement-oriented virtues of adaptivity and excellence. The twentieth century's first decade was a fertile time for Indian ethnography, especially in the description and analysis of caste.' New data were being gathered and published in the landmark caste-ranking sections of the I90I Census of India. The monumental government ethnographic survey was begun. Significant scholarly interpretations of caste appeared almost simultaneously from diverse sources. Sir Herbert H. Risley in Calcutta, Celestin Bougle in Paris and Shridhar V. Ketkar, then a young graduate student in America, each sought to explain the nature of caste and its place in India's social order.2 It does not appear that these learned expositions found a substantial audience among their subjects-the citizens of India.3 But if Indians were not reading and responding to the academic theorists, they were themselves experimenting with the social and cultural paradigms of caste. One almost theatrical aspect of this phenom-

Social Mobilization and Political Development in South India

Abstract: I T MAY BE TAKEN for granted that social organization and traditions influence to some degree the process of political development, and that at least some political changes cause changes in social relations. In order that industrialization, literacy, and urbanization should result in the same sort of government in all countries, as seems to have been assumed by some scholars,1 it is obvious that forms of organization tending in other directions must be eliminated or rendered redundant. The usual assumption seems to have been that social forces leading to development, or political development itself, nullify traditional social organization. It seems equally plausible, however, that if political development affects social organization, it may just as well reinforce traditional aspects of society.2 The Rudolphs have argued, for example, that the introduction of Western styles of politics has helped to maintain the traditional caste organization of Indian society, albeit in its "democratic incarnation. The application of Karl Deutsch's concept of social mobilization to the Indian context provides a convenient test of the possibility that political development may reinforce certain traditional forms of social behavior.4 As this article shows, most of the political features which Deutsch postulates

The Danish peasant village

Abstract: Danish folklorists in the nineteenth century, in the interests of nationalism and cultural chauvinism, made extensive investigations of the culture of the peasant population. At first this was literary only — ballads, myths, tales and proverbs — but was presently extended (especially by Evald Tang Kristensen) to include all aspects of peasant life. From this interview material it has been possible to retrieve a coherent picture of the morphology and dynamics of the village: the economic, political and social structures; the characteristics of a ‘peasant cosmology; relationships with other groups — other villages, the manor, a caste of ‘untouchables'; and to obtain some hints as to the etiology of these social phenomena.

Ordres, castes et États en pays Sérèr (Sénégal): Essai d'interprétation d'un système politique en transition

Abstract: The constant need to have a balanced power system, which caracterizes the traditional Serer system, appears at the central, provincial and village levels, just as it is in the respective relations of orders and castes. And yet that system was only one stage in an unfinished process, which was stopped by colonization, and it is now disappearing.The fact that a single political framework associates orders and castes leads one to question the right to transfer the caste concept outside of India and that of order outside the Western Medieval world. The distinction between the concepts of order and estate, as well as historical analysis, enable us to conclude that the Serer land seems to be on its wav to a transition between two types of Societies—one in which the political framework drew its cohesion from a system of orders dominating a sub-system of castes, and the other in which estates are gaining a leading position and in which castes remain only as caste consciousness.

Litigation as a Strategy for Personal Mobility: The Case of Urban Caste Association Leaders

Abstract: N its most general sense, social change involves change in the normative order of a society. Some would say that this necessarily involves a change in the patterns by which wealth is distributed. Others look for basic ideological shifts. Still others seek basic changes in the organizational modes by which functions are fulfilled. In each of these approaches, change involves mobility for some portion of the population. The means by which upward mobility is achieved often indicate the outlines of emerging social structures. Pursuit of mobility in a changing social order has entrepreneurial aspects because entrepreneurship involves the creative manipulation of existing relationships in unprecedented (non-normative) ventures. As such, it always proceeds in a normative limbo, relying on conventional expectations to support the unexpected. This study reports on a type of entrepreneurial career crafted in part from two seemingly divergent normative orders. It partakes of resources in the caste and the legal systems in India to produce an, as yet, nonroutinized pattern of personal mobility which, since its occurrence is widespread in urban centers, may be the basis for the formattion of a new class with considerable political and economic significance in the emerging Indian social structure. Recent studies of caste in India portray it as holding important potential for significant social change. They show that an apparently rigid, ascriptive system of stratification actually possesses characteristics conducive to adjustment to 'modern' modes of social organization, production, and political integration. From a historical perspective, caste is portrayed as a fluid ("resilient") set of relationships rather than the brittle, unyielding pyramid perceived by outsiders. Administrative and judicial acts of the British raj are held responsible for creating, by reification, a caste system of artificial rigidity (Galanter, I968). Before the political and economic consolidation brought about under colonial rule, the meaning of caste was confined to relationships within villages and among small groupings of villages which were

Gandhi and India's peasants, 1917–22

Abstract: The general problem raised here is peasant involvement in Afro‐Asian nationalist movements. As a case study the focus is M. K. Gandhi's attitude to and activities among Indian peasants from 1917 to 1922 and their response, firstly to his broad span of rural work for social reform and the rectification of particular peasant grievances, and then to his India‐wide passive resistance campaigns on continental issues which had no specifically rural appeal. This analysis underlines the fact that ‘India's peasants’ were no monolithic group. They differed from area to area in economic and social position and were further fragmented by the ties of religion, tribe and caste. Consequently the nature and range of their wider public awareness varied, and their relationships with Gandhi were diverse and complicated. In certain areas he attracted wide support, even adulation, particularly where he campaigned on local grievances. But peasant response to his all‐India calls for passive resistance was geographically restric...

Stealing Women among the Koya of South India

Abstract: The Koya are a tribal people numbering about 200,000 who live in Southeastern India on the flanks of the Godavari River in the states of Madhya and Andhra Pradesh. For some cultural and political purposes they are treated by the central government independently from the Hindu caste system, but in the areas in which they live they are integrated into the caste system for ritual as well as day-to-day interactional purposes. That is, they are generally accorded the status of castes low in the (idealized) ritual hierarchy, and the roles which they perform in relation to the larger Hindu society are coordinate with this ascribed status.