Culture Stratification And Development
Contents: Preface. Introduction. 1. The changing structure and process of social stratification in contemporary India. 2. Caste class and globalisation: continuity and change. 3. Caste and peasantry: some questions and clarifications. 4. Why there is only caste and not caste system in India today. 5. Gender and social stratification in contemporary India. 6. The Tamil Diaspora ethnicisation and state in contemporary Sri Lanka. 7. Interlinking culture and development: a case of Chanderi in Madhya Pradesh. 8. The social organisation of urban space: a case study of a small town in central India. 9. Some reflections on higher education state and social hierarchy in India. 10. A note on modernity and post modernism. 11. Explicating Amartya Sens concept of social opportunity. 12. Society state and development: the Indian dynamics. Index.
The book presents a well-knit analysis of intertwining of culture, stratification and development in the first decade of 21st century in India. Social difference and power are seen as the most effective bases of social stratification. Caste as a system has lost its appeal, but caste as a phenomenon has gained considerable space in elections, mobilisations and in extra-legal actions. Caste is, thus, more of a state of mind and identity rather than a bedrock of intercaste and intracaste relations.
Individual and family have relegated caste to the background. Globalisation has enhanced the significance of the concepts of individual, development, freedom, opportunities, market, competition, etc. Besides a critique of the caste system in the wake of these concepts and related practices, the book offers a lucid analysis of issues relating to gender, diaspora, cultural space and status, social opportunity and mobility, etc. The views of D.P. Mukerji, Frantz Fanon, Paulo Freire, Charles Bettelheim, Gunnar Myrdal, John Stuart Mill, Amartya Sen, Pierre Bourdieu, Ramchandra Guha, etc., have been discussed in terms of their significance for interlinking of culture, stratification and development. The book is a valuable contribution not only for the students and researchers of Social Sciences, but also for the intellegentsia in general.
