Caste, Class and Power: Changing Patterns of Stratification in a Tanjore Village

Out of stock

Out of stock

Free & Quick Delivery Worldwide

First published in 1965, this text has since acquired the status of a classic in Indian sociology. Andre Beteille studied the changing patterns of stratification in a South Indian village in an intensive field study spread over ten months. This book recounts the gradual transformation of a social system that, till the end of the nineteenth century, was structured primarily on distinctions of caste—between the Brahmins, the middle-level non-Brahmins and the Adi-Dravidas. Beteille shows how the forces of modernization had rendered some areas of village life caste-free, while others were still governed by considerations of caste. The locus of power had shifted from the caste structure to more differentiated institutions such as the Panchayats and political parties. With land coming into the market, the distribution of property was dissociated from caste. An intertwining of still-nascent political and economic conditions had rendered the social system more complex and dynamic. A retrospective of the author’s experiences on the field and a review of the different ways in which caste and class were studied are provided. Beteille’s prose flows easily, and there is a freshness of insight in his observations and inferences. This study is a landmark, for in attempting to know one village, Beteille refines the analytical frames through which his discipline studies society.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Andre Beteille

Andre Beteille was a founder-member of the Department of Sociology of the Delhi School of Economics where he was Professor of Sociology till 1999. He has held visiting appointments at Cambridge, the London School of Economics, Erasmus University, Rotterdam and various other institutions in Europe and America. He was also a Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study, Berlin and a Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities, Edinburgh. He was a Jawaharlal Nehru Fellow from 1968 to 1970, and received the Jawaharlal Nehru National Award of the Government of Madhya Pradesh in 1994. Apart from his newspaper articles, he has published extensively in scholarly periodicals in India and abroad. His books include Caste, Class and Power, Studies in Agrarian Social Structure, Society and Politics in India and Chronicles of Our Time.

reviews

0 in total

There are no reviews yet.

Bibliographic information

Title
Caste, Class and Power: Changing Patterns of Stratification in a Tanjore Village
Author
Edition
1st ed.
Publisher
ISBN
195658345
Length
xii+298p., Tables; Maps; 22cm.
Subjects