Caste

About: Caste is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 5681 publications have been published within this topic receiving 91330 citations. The topic is also known as: caste system.

"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 Sepoys and the Company : Tradition and Transition in Northern India 1770-1830

Abstract: Professor Alavi examines the factors used by the British when forming the East India Company's Bengal Army in the period 1770-1830. Kinship groups, diet, and caste played as important a part as the more practical financial incentives offered by pension schemes and invalid pay in providing a loyal high-status army for the emerging colonial authority.

Social organization in the ant Pheidole dentata: physical and temporal caste ratios lack ecological correlates

Abstract: Caste theory states that the proportions of individuals in different demographic classes of an insect society should vary with environmental factors, and are adaptive because they enhance colony-level efficiency. We examined the proportions of workers in different age and size classes (temporal and physical castes) in whole colonies of the ant Pheidole dentata collected in two different habitats. Despite significant ecological differences between the habitats in competition, resource availability and predation, we found no differences in the physical and temporal caste structures of colonies. Also, there was no correlation between physical or temporal caste ratios and the reproductive output of colonies. Because of topography, distance between sites, and apparent low vagility of Pheidole alates, we assume that gene flow between the sites is inadequate to account for the observed similarities. Although age- and size-related patterns of division of labor were observed, similarities in the behavioral profiles (the sum of the relative contributions of each age cohort to the performance of tasks) in colonies having different age caste structures suggests that worker, flexibility may be more important than rigidly programmed age- and size-correlated patterns of task performance.