Showing papers on "Caste published in 1999"

Screening Culture, Viewing Politics: An Ethnography of Television, Womanhood, and Nation in Postcolonial India

Abstract: In Screening Culture, Viewing Politics Purnima Mankekar presents a cutting-edge ethnography of television-viewing in India. With a focus on the responses of upwardly-mobile, yet lower-to-middle class urban women to state-sponsored entertainment serials, Mankekar demonstrates how television in India has profoundly shaped women’s place in the family, community, and nation, and the crucial role it has played in the realignment of class, caste, consumption, religion, and politics. Mankekar examines both “entertainment” narratives and advertisements designed to convey particular ideas about the nation. Organizing her study around the recurring themes in these shows—Indian womanhood, family, community, constructions of historical memory, development, integration, and sometimes violence—Mankekar dissects both the messages televised and her New Delhi subjects’ perceptions of and reactions to these messages. In the process, her ethnographic analysis reveals the texture of these women’s daily lives, social relationships, and everyday practices. Throughout her study, Mankekar remains attentive to the tumultuous historical and political context in the midst of which these programs’ integrationalist messages are transmitted, to the cultural diversity of the viewership, and to her own role as ethnographer. In an enlightening epilogue she describes the effect of satellite television and transnational programming to India in the 1990s. Through its ethnographic and theoretical richness, Screening Culture, Viewing Politics forces a reexamination of the relationship between mass media, social life, and identity and nation formation in non-Western contexts. As such, it represents a major contribution to a number of fields, including media and communication studies, feminist studies, anthropology, South Asian studies, and cultural studies.

Kin conflict over caste determination in social Hymenoptera

Abstract: We argue that caste determination, the process whereby females in the social Hymenoptera develop into either queens or workers, is subject to kin-selected conflict. Potential conflict arises because developing females are more closely related to their would-be offspring than to those of other females. Therefore, they may favour becoming queens contrary to the interests of other developing females and of existing queens and workers. We suggest two contexts leading to potential caste conflict. The first occurs when queens are reared in a reproductive phase following an ergonomic phase of worker production, while the second occurs when queens and workers are reared simultaneously. The first context assumes that workers' per capita contribution to colony survival and productivity falls with rising colony size. A critical feature influencing whether potential conflict is realized is the extent to which developing females can determine their own caste (“self-determination”). Self-determination is facilitated when female larvae control their own food intake and when queen-worker size dimorphism is low. We know of no strong evidence for actual conflict over caste fate arising in the first context. However, stingless bees and polygynous ants with excess queen-potential larvae that are either forced to develop as workers or are culled as adults demonstrate actual caste conflict in the second context. Caste conflict does not preclude caste regulation for “the good of the colony”, but such regulation is contingent on either the absence of potential conflict or on developing females losing control of their caste fate.

Democracy without Associations: Transformation of the Party System and Social Cleavages in India

Abstract: India's party system has undergone a profound transformation over the last decade. The Congress Party, a catch-all party that brought independence in 1947 and governed India for much of the period since then, no longer dominates the electoral scene. Political parties which draw support from particular caste and religious groups are now more powerful than ever before. "Democracy Without Associations" explains why religious and caste-based political parties come to dominate the electoral landscape in 1990s India and why catch-all parties have declined. Arguing that political parties and state policy can make some social divisions more salient than others and also determine how these divisions affect the political system, the author offers an explanation for the relationship between electoral competition and the politicization of social differences in India. He notes that the relationship between social cleavages and the party system is not axiomatic and that political parties can influence the links they have to social cleavages. The argument developed for India is also used to account for emergence of class-based parties in Spain and the electoral success of a religious party in Algeria."Democracy Without Associations" will interest scholars and students of Indian politics, and party politics, as well as those interested in the impact of social divisions on the political system.Pradeep K. Chhibber is Assistant Professor of Political Science and Associate Director, Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies, University of Michigan.

Women, Family, and Child Care in India: A World in Transition

Abstract: Preface 1. Introduction 2. Field methods and longitudinal research in Bhubaneswar 3. The patrifocal family: growing up female in the Old Town 4. Variations and transpositions: being a wife, mother, and daughter in the New Capital 5. Caste, class and gender: to be poor and female 6. Going out to school: women's changing aspirations 7. Change and continuity in women's lives: a three-generational perspective 8. Systems of family and gender in transition.

Evolution of social parasitism in ants: size of sexuals, sex ratio and mechanisms of caste determination

Abstract: Social parasitism, one of the most intriguing phenomena in ants, has evolved to various levels, the most extreme form being parasites that have lost the worker caste and rely completely on the host...

"English Is Here to Stay": A Critical Look at Institutional and Educational Practices in India.

Abstract: Based on an ongoing ethnographic project, this article examines ways in which the Indian middle class, with its relatively easy access to English, represents an inner circle of power and privilege that for a variety of reasons remains inaccessible to particular groups of people in India. Specifically, the data revealed that certain institutional and teaching practices keep English out of the reach of lower income and lower caste groups and push them into outer circles. The students central to this article are Dalit (lower-caste) students and students from the so-called Other Backward Classes who have been socialized in Gujarati-medium schools in Grades K-12 and who have to contend with English at the tertiary level.

The Untouchables of India

Abstract: The untouchables - an overview untouchability - theories of caste the ambiguity of untouchables untouchable myths of origin discrimination, disabilities and segregation untouchable occupations emancipation movements B.R. Ambedkar leader of the untouchables positive discrimination conclusion.

Caste, class, and equal citizenship

Abstract: There is a familiar egalitarian constitutional tradition and another we have largely forgotten. The familiar one springs from Brown v. Board of Education;1 its roots lie in the Reconstruction era. Courtcentered and countermajoritarian, it takes aim at caste and racial subordination. The forgotten one also originated with Reconstruction, but it was a majoritarian tradition, addressing its arguments to lawmakers and citizens, not to courts. Aimed against harsh class inequalities, it centered on decent work and livelihoods, social provision, and a measure of economic independence and democracy. Borrowing a phrase from its Progressive Era proponents, I will call it the social citizenship tradition.2 My thesis is that the seemingly separate fates and flaws of these two egalitarian constitutional outlooks are joined. By retrieving the history of the social citizenship tradition and its buried links to the court-

Asking for and giving baki: Neo-bondage, or the interplay of bondage and resistance in the Tamilnadu power-loom industry

Abstract: This paper on labour relations in the power-loom industry of the south Indian town Kumarapalayam (Salem district, Tamilnadu) explores the dynamics of this practice of 'ask ing for and giving baki', employers' advances to their labourers, which has now become a widespread custom within this capitalist, industrial and urban setting. The introduction of this practice is related to the manufacturer-employers' search for a stable, skilled and disciplined workforce, the entry of a non-traditional weaving caste (Vellalar Gounder) into this industry, and the exclusion of particular groups on the basis of caste, gender and skill. The effects of giving advances on labour relations and labour turnover, however, reveal the problematic nature of this practice. Although employers have undoubtedly attempted to reintroduce through debt a form of labour attachment within this small-scale power-loom industry, the effectiveness of this strategy is highly paradoxical as labourers continuously escape bonds by moving to other employers, factories and even towns. It is suggested that a study of the dynamics and dialectics of imposing bonds and escaping ties may further our understanding of how labour bondage and its contestation take shape in an urban, industrial context.

The Politics of Accumulation in Small‐town India

Abstract: Summaries Using the analytical framework of social structures of accumulation, the economic politics of local urban civil‐social organisations and their impact on capital, class and the business economy is examined. Although such organisations are structured through many dimensions, notably occupation, commodity, party politics, religion, gender and locality, the most prominent single category comprises caste — and closely‐related, finely‐defined occupational associations. In the town's societal corporatist form of accumulation, the political, cultural and ideological hegemony of a single social group — the capitalist class — imposes itself, supported by a strong ideology based on transformations of the institution of caste. Due to the reinforcement of caste, patriarchy and the rhetoric of town unity, economic interests and ideological factors overlap in exactly the manner Gramsci thought to be the essence of civil society. Furthermore, through the caste system and through patriarchy, ideology comes to form a significant component in the local social structures of accumulation.

Effects of the status of women on the first-birth interval in indian urban society

Abstract: The status of women, which is relative and multidimensional, has an important bearing on any long-term reduction in fertility. In Indian society, where cohabitation and childbearing are socially sanctioned only after marriage, the length of the first-birth interval affects the completed family size by influencing the spacing and childbearing pattern of a family. This study examines the influence of certain aspects of the status of married women--education, employment, role in family decision making, and age at marriage--along with three socioeconomic variables--per capita income of the family, social position of the household, and the caste system--on the duration of the first-birth interval in an urban Hindu society of the north-east Indian state of Assam. The data were analysed by applying life table and hazard regression techniques. The results indicate that a female's age at marriage, education, current age, role in decision making, and the per capita income of the household are the main covariates that strongly influence the length of the first-birth interval of Hindu females of urban Assam. Of all the covariates studied, a female's education appears to be a key mediating factor, through its influence on her probability of employment outside the home and thereby an earned income and on her role in family decision making. Unlike other Indian communities, the effect of the caste system does not have a significant effect on first-birth timing in this urban Hindu society.

Fishing for status

Abstract: An ignored but significant group in the local economy, female vendors of the traditional Kharvi fishing community in Goa, India have, in many ways, benefited from recent fisheries development. Their success in the markets has reinforced more egalitarian gender relations within fishing households, as well as affecting their class mobility and caste status in Goan society. Rather than being “victims” of technological development that has focused on fishermen, many Goan Catholic fisherwomen, in contrast to their Hindu counterparts, have made an economically successful transition from “barefoot, headload peddlers” in the villages to market entrepreneurs, working in small cooperative groups. The more complementary and egalitarian gender relations of fishing groups represent a reversal of the dominant patriarchal norms of Indian society. Ironically, the effects of economic success, education for the younger generation, and the withdrawal of Kharvi daughters from marketing activities may alter their economic and domestic independence and undermine more egalitarian gender relations in the future.

Race, caste and status: indians in Colonial Spanish America. Nuevo México: Albuquerque, 1999. 151 p.

Abstract: How and with what effect were notions of race and status applied to indigenous peoples in colonial Spanish America? To answer that question, Jackson compares the legal and social distinctions created by Spanish officials to separate the colonizers from the colonized in northwestern Mexico, an area on the periphery of Spain's empire, and in Bolivia, a so-called core region with a large sedentary native population. In both regions Spanish elites imposed on native peoples a hierarchical social order based on skin color, language, dress, residence, and access to land. As fixed as these definitions may have seemed in parish registers, censuses, and tribute records, the actual circumstances of people's lives--whether Indian or mestizo--show that racial classifications were imprecise and subjective. While identity categories had definite importance, particularly for defining who made tribute payments, they were also mutable. Jackson shows that indigenous peoples routinely moved upward to take advantage of opportunities to improve their lives. This book offers students the first new synthesis in over thirty years of what race meant in colonial Spanish America, and it raises important issues about caste, or how and why people knew their relative place in society. "Provides an important corrective of our understanding of ethnicity and caste society in Latin America."--Erick D. Langer, Georgetown University

Democratic institutions, political representation and women's empowerment: The quota debate in India

Abstract: This article reflects upon the debate on quotas for women in representative institutions of government. It poses the question whether current debates about quotas for women are relevant to debates on women's empowerment. In doing so, it points to the bases upon which the arguments for and against quotas have been presented within the Indian political system, taking into account the historical debates on caste, the emergence of coalition politics, the strength of the women's movement, and the engagement of women's groups with the politics of difference. The central argument of the article is that unless the issues of class‐based and caste‐based differences are taken seriously by women's groups in India, the wider question of empowerment cannot be satisfactorily answered. The conclusion assesses whether the Indian example is of relevance to wider debates on quotas as strategies of empowerment.

Dalits in modern India : vision and values

Abstract: Introduction - S.M. Michael Untouchability and Stratification in Indian Civilisation - Shrirama Who is a Dalit? - John C.B. Webster Colonialism within Colonialism - Mahesh Gavaskar Phule's Critique of Brahmin Power Dalit Vision of a Just Society in India - S.M. Michael Ambedkar, Buddhism and the Concept of Religion - Timothy Fitzgerald The Dalit Movement in Mainstream Sociology - GOPAL GURU Liberation Movements in Comparative Perspective - K.P. SINGH Dalit Indians and Black Americans Sociology of India and Hinduism - S. Selvam Towards a Method Hinduisation of Adivasis - Arjun Patel A Case Study from South Gujarat Ambedkar's Daughters - Traude Pillai-Vetschera A Study of Mahar Women in Ahmednagar District of Maharashtra The BSP in Uttar Pradesh - Christophe Jaffrelot Party of the Dalits or of the Bahujans - or Catch-all Party? Ambedkar's Interpretation of the Caste System, its Economic Consequences and Suggested Remedies - Sukhadeo Thorat Dalits and Economic Policy - Gail Omvedt Contributions of Dr B.R. Ambedkar Reservation Policy and the Empowerment of Dalits - P.G. Jogdand Scheduled Castes, Employment and Social Mobility - Richard Pais Index

Race, Caste and Status: Indians in Colonial Spanish America

Abstract: How and with what effect were notions of race and status applied to indigenous peoples in colonial Spanish America? To answer that question, Jackson compares the legal and social distinctions created by Spanish officials to separate the colonizers from the colonized in northwestern Mexico, an area on the periphery of Spain's empire, and in Bolivia, a so-called core region with a large sedentary native population. In both regions Spanish elites imposed on native peoples a hierarchical social order based on skin color, language, dress, residence, and access to land. As fixed as these definitions may have seemed in parish registers, censuses, and tribute records, the actual circumstances of people's lives--whether Indian or mestizo--show that racial classifications were imprecise and subjective. While identity categories had definite importance, particularly for defining who made tribute payments, they were also mutable. Jackson shows that indigenous peoples routinely moved upward to take advantage of opportunities to improve their lives. This book offers students the first new synthesis in over thirty years of what race meant in colonial Spanish America, and it raises important issues about caste, or how and why people knew their relative place in society. "Provides an important corrective of our understanding of ethnicity and caste society in Latin America."--Erick D. Langer, Georgetown University

Dalits and politics in rural North India: The Bahujan Samaj party in Uttar Pradesh

Abstract: In the last decade the Bahaujan Samaj Party has established a strong electoral presence in northern India. It has been particularly successful in Uttar Pradesh where it has participated in government three times in the 1990s. Although the party seeks to mobilise the support of the ‘bahujan’ — the non‐high caste majority of the population — it is argued here, on the basis of aggregate and survey analysis, that it has been constrained by its excessive reliance on just some sections of former untouchables (Dalits). The Bahujan Samaj Party represents a significant social and political movement of some Dalit groups but it has failed to secure the support of the wider population of the rural poor.

Friendship and the private sphere

Abstract: Introduction One of the central arguments of this book is that friendship is a social relationship, and not just a personal one. Of course, it is a personal one, and one over which people can exercise a good deal of agency. However, it is also a relationship which is socially patterned – shaped and constrained by factors over which the individuals involved have only limited control (Duck, 1993). In particular, the forms which friendships take vary historically with changes in the dominant characteristics of the social and economic formation in which they occur. Expressed differently, the nature of the obligations and solidarities which arise between friends – and indeed who is recognised as a friend and what this represents – is influenced by the web of other commitments and obligations which an individual has. And these other commitments and obligations are themselves rooted in the economic and social ‘realities’ which confront the individual. Exactly how these impact on each individual will depend on their specific location within the social and economic structure. Class, ethnicity, gender, kinship, caste, age, and whatever other social divisions are most pertinent to that society at that period will impact on the ‘freedoms’ there are to develop forms of informal relationship and shape the consequent solidarities that emerge. As discussed in the introductory chapter, this type of argument has long been accepted in the field of family studies.

Gender ideologies and the formation of rural industrial classes in South India today

Abstract: Major structural changes are under way today in employment in rural India. There has been a great increase in non-agricultural employment. This case study considers one form of non-agricultural employment, namely rural manufacturing industry in South India. The synthetic gem-cutting industry has been established in central Tamilnadu for decades. However, in the 1990s this rural industry has gone through extremely rapid and significant change. It is argued that this industrial transition is both impacting on, and has in turn been influenced by, rural caste and kinship relations. These transforming relations connect closely with the process of class differentiation that is under way within the various rural social groups who are associated with the industry. Within this context it is argued that two general hypotheses can be made. First, it is argued that the 'working class' is not undifferentiated, but deeply fractured along caste and gender lines. Second, it is claimed that class relations do not always s...

Illfare in India : essays on India's social sector in honour of S. Guhan

Abstract: Introduction - S Subramanian and Barbara Harriss-White PART ONE: POPULATION AND WORKFORCE Population and Development Revisited - Robert Cassen Labour Market Characteristics and Employment Generation Programmes in India - K Nagaraj PART TWO: HEALTH AND DISABILITY Technology and Costs of Medical Care - V R Muraleedharan Some Emerging Issues and Policy Imperatives On to a Loser - Barbara Harriss-White Disability in India PART THREE: DISCRIMINATION AND ITS REDRESSAL Caste, Politics and the Reservation Issue - P Radhakrishnan Poverty and Discrimination - D Jayaraj and S Subramanian Measurement, and Evidence from Rural India PART FOUR: LITERACY AND EDUCATION Adult Literacy in India Since Independence - Venkatesh Athreya Policy and Practice Exclusion in Education - Manabi Majumdar Indian States in Comparative Perspective PART FIVE: WELFARE, GOVERNANCE AND POLICY State, Market, Collective and Household Action in India's Social Sector - Barbara Harriss-White Subjective and Objective Indicators of Welfare Change over Time - S Janakarajan and Paul Seabright Evidence from a Resurvey Legal Institutions for Development - Sriram Panchu Some Aspects of Welfare, Governance and the Law in India Public Action and Social Inequality - Jean Dr[gr]eze and Amartya Sen

Disputes and arguments amongst nomads : a caste council in India

Abstract: This book provides the first detailed analysis of a traditional Indian legal institution, a caste panchayat. It discusses the organization of the panchayat, the cases handled by it and the rationale behind its decisions and also the reasons why such institutions are not compatible with the Indian democracy.

Children Of The Cultural Revolution: Family Life And Political Behavior In Mao's China

Abstract: Introduction The Political Status System Job Ranking and Social Classes Class and Caste Family Life and Political Behavior in Pre-1966 China The Upper Caste Middle Class The Upper Caste Lower Class The Lower Caste Class, Caste, and Political Behavior in China

The Hukou System and China's Rural Development

Abstract: The dismantling of collective agriculture and the consequent decline of the hukou system have been welcomed by many Western scholars as a "liberation" of China's peasantry. In these scholars' accounts, the collective/hukou system by binding peasants to their home village formalized, rigidified, and perpetuated rural/urban inequality. These scholars see the hukou system mainly as a system of social control that (like baojia)I imposed a second-class status on the peasantry (some have even likened it to a caste system). They further claim that the collective system retarded rural economic development and by limiting peasant mobility also retarded national economic development, thus perpetuating poverty in the countryside. I grew up in rural China during the collective era and acutely felt the injustice of rural/urban inequality as well as the limitations imposed by having a rural hukou. On entering college in 1977, after working five years on a collective farm and in a village factory, I was exasperated to find that my classmates who had a nonagricultural hukou and had worked five years continued to receive salaries while studying in college. Those with an agricultural hukou like myself did not have salaries even though we had worked as long as they did. This different treatment was not the result of different job experiences. It was simply that those with a nonagricultural hukou had had their stay in the rural areas during shangshan xiaxiang yuandong (going up the mountains and down to the village movement) credited for their salary. Nevertheless, current scholarly discussion is one-sided. By presenting the dismantling of the collectives and the hukou system only as the "liberation" of the

Women's status and fertility in rural India

Abstract: This article examines the relationship between women's status and fertility in India in the current (third) phase of the Indian fertility transition that began in the period 1900–1920. Variables used in the study include caste, occupation, and education of husband and wife, educational status of the household, role of female in the society, autonomy in decision-making, and interaction with and exposure to mass media. Women's status is conceptualized at the micro-level using the household as a unit; and the macro-level using society as a unit. Given the low levels of female literacy and participation in salaried employment, variables such as caste, education, and occupation of husband have been included in the computation of women's status. The variables, age-specific fertility rate, fecundity, and the number of children ever born, have been used as measures of fertility. Among other findings, the study reveals that there is a difference of approximately two births in the total fertility rate between low s...

If rain doesn't come : an anthropological study of drought and human ecology in western Rajasthan

Abstract: Rainfall is very unreliable in western Rajasthan and drought and famine are frequent. Applying an ecological-anthropological approach, this study shows how different socio-economic and caste groups adopt different adaptive strategies for subsistence and demonstrates the inter-relationships between physical, social, economic and political factors in the human ecology of the region.