Society and Culture in India: A Reader

Contents: I. An Introduction to Sociology and Pioneering Sociologists: 1. Sociology Concepts and Institutions/André Béteille. 2. The Hindu Nationalist Sociology of G.S. Ghurye/Carol Upadhya. 3. On Srinivas’s ‘Sociology’/Sujata Patel. 4. Louis Dumont and the Study of Society in India/T.N. Madan. 5. The Anti-Utopian Liberal: An Introduction to the Works of André Béteille/Dipankar Gupta. II. Sociology of Caste: Past and Present: 6. Closed and Open SocialStratification/André Béteille. 7. Transformation of Caste System into ‘Caste’ in Contemporary India/K.L. Sharma. 8. The Reproduction of Inequality: Occupation, Caste and Family/André Béteille.III. Rural and Agrarian Sociology: 9.Introduction/Vandana Madan. 10. Whither the Indian Village: Culture and Agriculture in ‘Rural’ India/Dipankar Gupta. 11. Cooperatives and Industrialisation in Rural Areas: The Indian Experiences/B.S. Baviskar and Donald W. Attwood. IV. Poverty and Development in India: 12. The Construction of Poverty and the Poor inColonial Post-Colonial India: An Overview/Nandini Gooptu.13. From Poverty to Poverty Policies for Translating Growth into Development/Dipankar Gupta. 14. How to Govern the Poor: The Role of Social Policies in Economic Transformation/Dwaipayan Bhattacharyya. V. Contemporary Social Issues: 15. Secularism in a Pluri-Religious Society: The Constitutional Vision/Rudolf C. Heredia. 16. Institutional Communalism in India/Pritam Singh. 17. Gendered Citizenship and Women’s Movement/Anurekha Chari.
18. Civil Society and Indian Democracy: Possibilities of SocialTransformation/Mihir Shah.

Society and Culture in India is a collection of eighteen carefully chosen essays written by internationally famous sociologists whose work is on India. It has been designed to take the reader through the discipline of Sociology to get an understanding of the complex nature of Indian society.

The editor of the volume, Subas Mohapatra has very perceptively grouped the various readings in the book under five main heads, they are: ‘An Introduction to Sociology and Pioneering Sociologists’, ‘Sociology of Caste Past and Present’, ‘Rural and Agrarian Society’, ‘Poverty and Development’ and ‘Contemporary Social Issues’.

The essays in this book dwell on several separate subject areas of sociology. This enables the Reader to provide a comprehensive view of the discipline of sociology itself as well as the society it tries to understand.

Some of the main concerns of this book are: growth and development of sociology in India; changing nature of caste, village and rural society; sociological analysis of poverty and contemporary issues associated with civil society; gender inequality and secularism and communalism.

The Reader does not try to be thematically exhaustive but it nevertheless enables one to see order beneath the everyday confusions of life in India. (jacket)