Showing papers on "Caste published in 1983"

Dangerous Wives and Sacred Sisters: Social and Symbolic Roles of High-Caste Women in Nepal

Abstract: assimilating. Sylvia Vatuk's essay-vivid and refreshingly unpretentious--calls to our attention forms of address, a feature of relationship terminologies that generally finds itself overshadowed in analysis by terms of reference. She makes a microscopic analysis of North Indian families and argues that the extension of meaning from purported "primary" referents is not a helpful means to understanding the types of family address patterns that engage her attention here, a finding complementing those reached by Needham and others in their analyses of terms of reference. Vatuk's contribution is one of the best of this collection and enhances

Minority Status and Schooling in Plural Societies

Abstract: Most nations today are plural societies with one or more minority groups. In the more industrialized and urbanized societies, where formal education has become institutionalized as the route to full adult status, minority education has become more problematic in many ways. Most important is the disproportionate school failure of some minority groups, even with efforts to improve their school success. This situation raises doubts about the possibility of using education to reduce social and economic inequality between dominant and minority groups. It also raises questions about the educability of some minority groups. Only in the United States have the twin problems of inequality and educability received such attention, though they are also major concerns in Britain, Israel, New Zealand, and other nations.'

Adaptive significance of the Indian caste system: an ecological perspective

Abstract: Indian society is an agglomeration of several thousand endogamous groups or castes each with a restricted geographical range and a hereditarily determine mode of subsistence. These reproductively isolated castes may be compared to biological species, and the society thought of as a biological community with each caste having its specific ecological niche. In this paper we examine the ecological-niche relationships of castes which are directly dependent on natural resources. Evidence is presented to show that castes living together in the same region had so organized their pattern of resource use as to avoid excessive intercaste competition for limiting resources. Furthermore, territorial division of the total range of the caste regulated intra-caste competition. Hence, a particular plant or animal resource in a given locality was used almost exclusively by a given lineage within a caste generation after generation. This favoured the cultural evolution of traditions ensuring sustainable use of natural resources. This must have contributed significantly to the stability of Indian caste society over several thousand years. The collapse of the base of natural resources and increasing monetarization of the economy has, however, destroyed the earlier complementarity between the different castes and led to increasing conflicts between them in recent years.

Educational Demands and Institutional Response: Dowa Education in Japan

Abstract: Education, as a major channel and access to social and institutional roles in Japan, is well documented.' In fact, the very preponderance of formal educational credentials as a prerequisite for success in Japanese social and economic life has been singled out as a source of extreme dysfunction in Japanese society.2 Yet, it remains a fact that access to education and especially certain selected sectors and institutions in Japan's educational structure is a sought-after goal of most Japanese families regardless of social class, geographic origin, and, as we shall see, caste status. The study that follows was conducted in Japan and concentrated on the political organizations and educational demands of a persistently isolated and discriminated-against group, the burakumin. Termed "Japan's invisible race" by Wagatsuma and DeVos, this group remains today, in many respects, a discrete subgroup in Japanese society, outside the pale of the majority and as such lacking the social and institutional connections so vital to individual mobility.3 Although official policy prohibits discrimination against this group or any other, and although the educational system is theoretically open to all, statistically, the burakumin have not participated and been represented in the upper levels of Japanese education and have consistently been the underachievers at the lower levels (as well as problem students, dropouts, etc., at least as identified by Japanese educational authorities). For this and a variety of other reasons, there is a fairly long history of active political organization and mobilization of burakumin to gain access to preferred institutions in Japanese society and to seek an end to official

Power and Solidarity: Clientage in Domestic Service [and Comments and Reply]

Abstract: This study investigates a role-specific vertical solidarity in South India, where urban Christian households employ rural Christians as domestics. The mistress-servant bond is characterized by the paradoxical features of subordination and devotion, unconditionality and instrumentality, sentiment and social distance. Their bond may appear to be dyadic, but in fact it implies a network of reciprocities among multiple social actors: the families of the employer and employee, the intermediaries between them, religious functionaries, and the audience of fellow regligionists. The domestic clientage is rooted in an economic precondition, but it is legitimated and structured within the prevalent caste idiom and functions within a specific institutional framework that determines the options for the participants and the modes of control they exercise.

Excommunication as Everyday Event and Ultimate Sanction: The Nature of Suspension from an Indian Caste

Abstract: The standard view of excommunication as severe, unusual punishment in India is shown to be inaccurate regarding a caste in Maharashtra. An alternative concept, centering on suspension from caste as an inevitable response to the pollution always incurred with any violation of caste rules, fits the particular caste in question and also fits the published descriptions of outcasting as well as or better than the standard view. By applying the alternative concept, it can be seen that panchayats are not like Western courts in the nature of the tasks they perform and that to view them as analogous to courts is seriously misleading.

Paraiyar Drummers of Sri Lanka: consensus and constraint in an untouchable caste

Abstract: While a number of writers have argued that untouchable castes in South Asia are alienated from, and exploited by, the larger high-caste society and culture of which they are the lowest part, Moffatt has recently argued that untouchables in Tamilnadu, south India, nevertheless share a deep “cultural consensus” with the higher castes concerning the basic values and assumptions of the caste system. Using contrasting data on untouchable Tamil Paraiyar Drummers in two locations in eastern Sri Lanka, this paper supports the consensus theory but also points to major constraints imposed on low-caste culture and social organization by prevailing political, economic, and demographic conditions. [Tamil untouchable castes, Sri Lanka, cultural consensus theory, purity versus kingly honor, matrilineal kinship, Hinduism]

Socio-economic determinants of fertility

Abstract: This study examined the effect of economic caste and income variations on fertility in India. It was hypothesized that the fertility differential among Indias caste groupings can be explained on the basis of economic status. The mean number of live births for the upper middle and lower caste women in the sample was 3.00 3.51 and 4.38 respectively. When the population was stratified according to income however the mean number of live births for the upper middle and lower income groups was 3.40 3.22 and 4.26 respectively showing that fertility does not decline uniformly with rising economic status. When the study sample was simultaneously stratified by caste and income the different income groups within castes did not follow a consistent pattern. The upper income group in the upper caste had the lowest mean number of births (2.17) compared with 3.18 for the upper income group in the middle caste and 4.85 for the upper income group in the lower caste. Overall the middle income group tended to demonstrate the lowest fertility and the low income group the highest fertility. Education was also found to lower fertility: women with no education averaged 4.45 births compared with 3.14 among women with less than a high school education and 2.50 among high school graduates. Respondents who claimed to participate in family decision making averaged 3.09 births whereas women who did not participate in this process averaged 4.17 births. Similarly women who reported a strong relationship with their husbands tended to have planned families (3 or fewer children) more often than women who reported an unsatisfactory relationship. These results indicate that fertility is affected by both the caste and economic status of the family with education affecting fertility directly by raising the age at marriage and indirectly through better knowledge of contraception and increased awareness of the costs of raising children.

Songs of the Mahars: An Untouchable Caste of Maharashtra, India

Abstract: This paper analyzes the form, language, and sociopolitical significance of songs sung by Mahars, a caste of untouchables living in the region of Maharashtra in Western India. Among India's untouchables, the Mahars are particularly important because it was among them that the untouchable movement first arose in India in the early twentieth century and under the leadership of Bhimarao Ambedkar came to win for the untouchables certain political and social rights. How and to what extent the aims and experiences of the movement are reflected in the songs of the Mahars, in particular the village Mahars, is a focus of this study. As the untouchable movement was primarily an urban movement, headed by urban, educated Mahars such as Ambedkar, this study should throw some light on the interaction between urban and rural culture and the effect of urban movements on village life. A tendency of most "folkloristic" studies of India has been to ignore the interaction between the two and deal with village life and culture in sort of a vacuum, concentrating on those castes and groups which show little urban influence. In this paper I have also compared the songs of Mahar men and women to see how they differ in their response to the movement. Very few studies have been done on the songs of village women,1 and fewer studies have compared men's and women's

Power and Solidarity: Clientage in Domestic Service1

Abstract: THAT INDIA IS A WORLD of parallel hierarchies and multiple channels of interchange has been amply documented. This complex world has spawned a variety of ways of regulating the flow of social goods-jajmani relationships within the caste structure (widely commented upon since Wiser 1936), exchanges based on principles of gift, duty, and honor (Iswaran 1966), communication networks (Beals 1970), commercialization agriculture (Frankel 1972), and class struggle (Gough 1973, Shivaraman 1973). The present study deals with a dependency arrangement outside the formal caste tradition: the vertical solidarity and diffuse interchange between rural and urban Christians in South India, the former performing domestic service for the latter. Though the Christian community considers itself immune to the caste ideology, this case shows that in fact Christians share in it. However, domestic service in Christian homes does not duplicate the ritually and occupationally based caste obligations of jajmani relationship. Rather, it approximates a culture-specific patron-client bond.

The gift of a girl: hierarchical exchange in north bihar

Abstract: "Hierarchy," writes Dumont (1970:124), "penetrates to the very core of the institutions of marriage and kinship." The primary way in which hierarchical principles find expression within North Indian kinship is in cases where individual castes are subdivided into various forms of ranked categories, whether clans, lineages, subcastes, or more amorphous units. To refer to the encompassing group as the "caste" implies that it is the endogamous unit, and that the internal subdivisions are in some kind of marital exchange relationship. In actuality, in most of the major castes with such internal structures, no clear demarcation between endogamy and hierarchical exchange2 (to avoid prejudging the situation as either hypergamous or hypogamous) exists. Both tendencies are present, exerting a certain tension on the structure of the group. This tension has a dynamic effect which modifies the static tendency which is the outstanding feature ofthe caste system. The "immutable paradigm" (Tyler 1973:26) becomes transformational. Furthermore, although it is generally held that marital exchange between unequal groups will be hypergamous, with girls of inferior families being given as wives to superior men, such is not invariably the case. There are some important systems which contain as a major element the giving of girls to inferior families. As a result, a relatively static structure becomes dynamic in the extreme, permitting a rank mobility over generations quite outside the usual paradigm of the fixed caste hierarchy, which traditional scholarship has established. This contrast between the fixed categories of the caste hierarchical structure and the alternative view of dynamic mobility within an otherwise fixed structure parallels certain of the major differences between the structural position of Dumont (1970) and the ethnoscientific position of Marriott and Inden (1977, 1974). In another paper (Brown 1981) I have argued that each position deals with part of the facts but that an adequate theory of Indian hierarchy requires a comprehensive paradigm which would be both structural and dynamic; which would in fact be transformational. Here, drawing on the insights of both views, I present more detailed ethnographic evidence for my earlier assertions. The significance of this tension between endogamy and hierarchical exchange is fundamental. The former is isolating and boundary-creating; the latter is unifying and hierarchizing. The basis of the caste system's fissiparous urges, the endoga? mous principle endlessly promotes diversification and segmentation, but when narrowly applied results in stasis. What is separated by the endogamous urge is reunited by the urge to unequal prestations. The ideology which underlies and

Race, Sex and the Law in Colonial Natal.

Abstract: The nature of sexual relations between a dominant and a subject people depends on many things, including the sexual moros of each group, the caste relations between them, class, and such accidental factors as the availability of partners among the dominant people and how attractive the dominant people find their subjects. when the rulers are white and the subjects black, the deep-seated identification in european culture of blackness and evil emerges.

The Upsurge of Women's Activism in India

Abstract: The visit of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi to the United States in 1982 may have raised questions among American feminists about the situation of Indian women. Mrs. Gandhi's skill in handling the American media projects a powerful image of Indian women. Aggregate statistics convey an entirely different picture. Indicators of the precarious situation of the masses of Indian women include a low literacy rate (25 percent compared to 47 percent for men), a low labor force participation rate, high unemployment and underemployment levels, and a shorter life expectancy for women than for men.1 Moreover, Indian women are an extremely heterogeneous group. Numbering over 330 million, they are stratified by caste and class and further divided by urban or rural residence, regional cultures and languages, religion, age, and position in the family. Patriarchal domination has a long history in India, and its manifestations vary across caste, class, and region. In response women have evolved a variety of coping strategies, and some women have struggled actively against their oppression. Much of the history of these struggles has been lost, but today women's activism is increasingly visible. So far this activism has touched the lives of only a tiny fraction of Indian women, but the potential for growth is there. Four strands of activism have emerged over the past decade. Among the urban middle class there are feminists engaged in research and action. Among the lower class there are grassroots organizations of tribal women, militant women union members, and self-help associations of women in the "informal sector" of the economy (petty production, trading, service activities, and contract labor). There are some connections among these different strands of activism and between each strand and more established institutions such as left political parties and their associated unions, elite women's organizations, and the press. The established institutions (which are maleand/or elite-dominated) seek to use women's activism for their own ends but also offer organizational resources needed to reach a large number of women. The situation is further complicated because the women activists themselves have varying commitments to "reform or revolution" and to party-controlled or autonomous women's groups. In this paper I will try to convey a sense of women's activism in India today. First I will sketch briefly the historical and social context that has shaped the activism of Indian women. Then I will describe the issues on which each activist strand focuses, the strategies they advocate, and the impact of their efforts. Finally I will assess the obstacles to a weaving together of the activist strands. This paper is intended as a modest contribution toward crosscultural and cross-national understanding among white American feminists. Too often we have been insensitive to the factors that divide us as women (race, class, imperialism) and unaware of the struggles of our sisters in other cultures. A genuine international sisterhood can be built only on the basis of mutual understanding.

Ethnogenesis of South Asia with special reference to India

Abstract: An attempt has been made to illustrate the quite complicated process of ethnogenesis in South Asia from the viewpoint of physical anthropology. The numerous invading waves which reached the Indian subcontinent from the northwest played an important role in this process. Most important for the ethnogenesis of South Asia was the invasion of Indo-Aryan groups in the middle of the 2nd millenium B.C. known from historical sources. In large parts of the Indo-Pakistan region they assimilated the aboriginal population in ethnic, cultural and linguistic respects in the course of time. Furthermore, the ethnogenesis of the Indian region is determined by the caste system of Hinduism which, however, is not as rigid as generally assumed. There are numerous evidences that since more than 2000 years a slow but steady process of assimilation and integration of tribal groups, living in the forest areas of Central India, into the Hindu caste system took place, a process which is still going on. It is intended to demonstrate to what degree the ethnogenetic processes in South Asia, known from prehistoric and historical sources, can be traced in human skeletal findings of different time periods as well as in the anthropological structure of the living population. Finally, hypotheses and theories, especially those of Risley and von Eickstedt are discussed, who attempted to interpret the great variability of anthropological and morphological traits in the Indian subcontinent by taking into consideration the existence of different old population substrata and their mixing and assimilation.

Warrior Caste ‘Raja’ and Gentleman ‘Zamindar’: One Person's Experience in the Late Nineteenth Century

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to interpret the life experience of a south Indian landholder at the end of the nineteenth century. The basis for interpretation comes from the author's analysis of the values of political economy among, chiefly, warrior castes as they adjusted to constraints of imperial rule from 1800 in Madras Presidency. The method of exposition is, for the most part, descriptive and narrative, with the intention of highlighting and contextualizing major concepts governing the man's thoughts and actions. Because the subject, a wealthy Tamil zamindar, kept English-language diaries, problems of cultural anachronism in the prose below are mitigated. Having the English vocabulary—or a small part of it—of our subject subverts the bugbear of ethnosociology, the cultural distortions inherent in using an alien language as one discusses the values of a social group. Contemporary newspaper commentary in English also lends cultural accuracy to the narrative. Memories of the subject linger still in Madurai Town, scene of many of his activities. I wrote the major part of the piece in Madurai and was honoured with a request to read it to the membership of the local Historical Society. That membership gave me paradoxical relief in saying of this cultural account, ‘She has told us nothing new about Baskara Setupati.’

Political emblems of caste identity: an interpretation of tamilcaste titles1

Abstract: This paper examines the structure and function of Tamil caste titles, interpreting them as political emblems of caste identity. It is suggested that these political emblems represent the reality ofcorporate authority and politicoeconomic dominance and that it is necessary to study these emblems in their own right as distinctive dimensions of caste identity rather than to subsume them under the caste names or varna categories which are notpolitical but ritual emblems ofcaste identity. A general review of Tamil caste titles and an analysis of three Tamil caste titles are undertaken. Researchers in India are well aware of the

Eighteenth century cape society and its historiography: Culture, race, and class

Abstract: The revisionist literature of the 1970s approached social stratification in South Africa with the insistence that proper ‘weighting’ of the race and class factors should occur. Arguing that class and not racial consciousness was the key determinant of social structure in pre‐industrial South Africa, it concluded that eighteenth century Cape society in certain areas of the colony was characterised by greater fluidity than the caste system of the American South or industrialised South Africa. George Fredrickson's comparative analysis of American and South African history rejects the first mentioned approach but agrees with the conclusion. This article argues that Fredrickson erred by characterising Cape society as being largely based on class and a permeable colour line. The extent to which Cape Town or frontier society can be categorised as such was limited, while the agrarian Western Cape, in terms of manumission rates and the incidence of mixed marriages, was one of the most rigid caste societies in the ...

Patterns of fertility and mortality in four caste groups in West Bengal.

Abstract: The problem of fertility and its variations have been examined in the present paper through 2 sets of variables biological and social. For biological variables bio-events such as age at menarche marriage first and last birth and total reproductive span have been taken into consideration. The other set of social variables are caste status economic status occupation education and awareness and extent of the use of family planning measures. The biological and social variables and their relative roles in determining the fertility and mortality patterns are examined in 4 populations: Varendra Brahmin Varendra Kayastha Tili and Jele of Nabadwip town in Nadia district West Bengal. The Varendra Kayastha are characterized by 2nd position in caste hierarchy highest educational status a better average economic status low fertility and mortality lowest number of mean surviving children and especially low reproductive wastage. The awareness of family planning measures is also highest in this caste group. On the other hand the Jele is characterized by low position in the caste hierarchy lowest economic and educational status high fertility and mortality and especially high reproductive wastage. The awareness of family planning measures is almost nil in this group. The Varendra Brahman and the Tili do not vary much in economic status. But in caste hierarchy the former is placed highest. The mean number of surviving children per mother is higher among the Tili than among the Varendra Brahman. In mortality and reproductive wastage the 2 castes do not vary much. Tables and charts illustrate results.

The History of Caste in South Asia - Caste Conflict and Elite Formation: The Rise of a Karāva Elite in Sri Lanka, 1500–1931 . By Michael Roberts. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1982.

Abstract: The literature on the south Asian caste system is vast and contentious and the current war of words shows no sign of abating. This book conforms to current trends both in focusing on the experience of a single caste group under colonial rule, and also in adopting a polemical tone towards other historians. Roberts' subject is the Karava population of Sri Lanka and his first aim is to explain why this group of poor fishermen and artisans managed to throw up a disproportionately large elite of businessmen, lawyers and other western-educated professional men by the end of the nineteenth-century. The discussion is set against the background of works on comparable Asian business communities such as the Marwaris and Parsis. An important theme, then, is the relationship between individual enterprise and the corporate structure of caste: did the Karava magnate class emerge because of, or in spite of, their roots in a hierarchical caste order? The conclusion here is that caste did not debar individual mobility and enterprise as the conventional wisdom once held, and that like other south Asian trading groups the Karava were able to use caste and kin networks to recruit labour and transmit capital, contracts and market information (pp. 127-30). The Sri Lankan setting provides a useful vantage point. Weber of course was the first to suggest that in Hindu society entrepreneurs were often outsiders—Zoroastrian Parsis and Jains—or that they held low caste status. Roberts shows that the same pattern applied in Sinhalese Buddhist society. As fishermen the Karava violated Buddhist sanctions against taking life; they, too, overcame the handicap of low status and a polluting occupation, moving from fishing to profitable new trades. Roberts argues that the Karava were able to turn their traditional skills to advantage in an expanding colonial economy. He traces their association with trade back to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries when Portuguese and Dutch rule helped to create a demand for commodities and services which the Karava were particularly well equipped to supply. As fishermen many of them moved easily into ship-building and other waterfront industries in the new colonial port towns, and their skill in building fishing boats enabled them to take up carpentry and other trades patronized by Europeans. For some Karava the next move was into petty contracting and during the seventeenth century enterprising members of the group supplied timber and construction materials to the Dutch. Others engaged in those well-known standbys of low-caste 'new men', distilling and arrack renting (pp. 79—89). South Asian fishermen have often been especially mobile people. The Tamil

Politics of affirmative action: race and public policy in america

Abstract: The policy of Affirmative Action seeks to remedy consequences of a century of both law-induced and custom-induced racial or caste constraints on the social mobility of blacks in American society It is a color-conscious or race- conscious policy or, in the case of female beneficiaries, a gender-conscious policy The execution of this policy involves “goals,” “quotas,” and “preferential treatment” in such areas as employment, education (colleges and professional schools), and government contractual procurement

Class, Caste and Landholding in the Analysis of the Rural Economy

Abstract: ILO pub-WEP pub. Working paper assessing the importance of social class, caste and land ownership variables in economic analysis of rural economies, comprising a case study of Bihar, India - includes a brief literature survey; based on a 1981 sample survey of poverty and rural employment, shows the importance of interactions and correlations in explaining inter-household variations in labour force participation, indebtedness, agricultural technology and education. Graphs and references.