The Remembered Village

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The Remembered Village
Author M. N. Srinivas
LanguageEnglish
SeriesOxford India Perennials
Subject Ethnography
PublisherOxford, Oxford University Press
Publication date
1978
Media typePrint
Pages356
ISBN 0783746830

The Remembered Village is a 1978 ethnological work by M. N. Srinivas. The book is about the villager who lives in the small village, named as Rampura in the state of Karnataka, then called Mysore. It is notable for the absence of fieldnotes as a base for the work, which is considered standard in ethnography following the standards set by Bronislaw Malinowski in Argonauts of the Western Pacific as they were lost due to arson, [1] and elicited fierce debate in the anthropological community due to its unorthodox origin, among other factors. [2] [3] [4] The book is noted for its concern on the aesthetic, flowing prose and the significant role of the ethnographer himself, [5] a marked departure from earlier works such as Evans-Pritchard's studies on the Nuer, which is written with a more objective voice.

Contents

Background

The caste system in India has long been the subject of scholarly interest, but there was a distinct lack of ethnographic material on it as noted by Radcliffe-Brown. [6] Inspired by this and other works such as that of Robert Redfield and Fei Hsiao-Tung, M.N. Srinivas set out to a remote part of India to carry out fieldwork as part of the position he was offered by his teacher, Evans-Pritchard and ended up choosing Rampura due to his fluency in Kannada and several emotional factors, including his ties to Mysore and being awed by the local view. [7]

Overview

The book consists of eleven chapters. General summaries of each chapter are included below.

[8]

Theoretical concepts

Sanskritisation

The all-India varna and the local jati, based on land ownership, often are not strictly the same, with Brahmins and Lingayats higher in the caste order often being clients lower in the Varna order. The disparity in rank between the economic status and the ritual status could result in high jati classes moving up the varna hierarchy by adopting practices of higher castes. [9]

Dominant caste

The concept of dominant caste in the book, where the peasant caste has much practical power, including influential members such as the headman, his lineage and the God's house lineage, could be related to their large numbers viv-à-vis the smaller numbers of the Brahmins, and could be used to explain other social phenomena, such as prestige among English trade unions. [10]

Reception

David Francis Pocock criticized Srinivas for putting excessive sociological jargon for his supposed audience,"the educated layman" and yet not sufficient to justify it as scholarly work, and also noted on the question of subjectivity. [11] Another common form of criticism relates to the shortcomings of structural-functionalism, the basis of the work as taught by Evans-Pritchard in the vein of Durkheim. [12]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Caste</span> Formal and informal social stratification and classification which confers status

A caste is a fixed social group into which an individual is born within a particular system of social stratification: a caste system. Within such a system, individuals are expected to: marry exclusively within the same caste (endogamy), follow lifestyles often linked to a particular occupation, hold a ritual status observed within a hierarchy, and interact with others based on cultural notions of exclusion, with certain castes considered as either more pure or more polluted than others. Its paradigmatic ethnographic example is the division of India's Hindu society into rigid social groups. Its roots lie in South Asia's ancient history and it still exists. However, the economic significance of the caste system in India has been declining as a result of urbanisation and affirmative action programs. A subject of much scholarship by sociologists and anthropologists, the Hindu caste system is sometimes used as an analogical basis for the study of caste-like social divisions existing outside Hinduism and India. The term "caste" is also applied to morphological groupings in eusocial insects such as ants, bees, and termites.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">E. E. Evans-Pritchard</span> British anthropologist (1902–1973)

Sir Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard FBA FRAI was an English anthropologist who was instrumental in the development of social anthropology. He was Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Oxford from 1946 to 1970.

Jāti is the term traditionally used to describe a cohesive group of people in the Indian subcontinent, like a tribe, community, clan, sub-clan, or a religious sect. Each Jāti typically has an association with an occupation, geography or tribe. Different intrareligious beliefs or linguistic groupings may also define some Jātis. The term is often translated approximately in English as caste.

Varṇa, in the context of Hinduism, refers to a social class within a hierarchical traditional Hindu society. The ideology is epitomized in texts like Manusmriti, which describes and ranks four varnas, and prescribes their occupations, requirements and duties, or Dharma.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Célestin Bouglé</span> French philosopher (1870–1940)

Célestin Charles Alfred Bouglé was a French philosopher known for his role as one of Émile Durkheim's collaborators and a member of the L'Année Sociologique.

Bhatia is a group of people and a caste found in Punjab, Sindh and Gujarat. Traditionally, they have been a trading and merchant community. The Bhatias primarily live in Northwestern India and Pakistan. The Bhatias, Lohanas and Khatris were similar communities and were known to intermarry. The Bhatias recruit Saraswat Brahmins as priests.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">M. N. Srinivas</span> Indian anthropologist and sociologist (1916–1999)

Mysore Narasimhachar Srinivas was an Indian sociologist and social anthropologist. He is mostly known for his work on caste and caste systems, social stratification, Sanskritisation and Westernisation in southern India and the concept of 'dominant caste'. He is considered to be one of the pioneering personalities in the field of sociology and social anthropology in India as his work in Rampura remains one of the early examples of ethnography in India. That was in contrast to most of his contemporaries of the Bombay School, who focused primarily on a historical methodology to conduct research, mainly in Indology. He also founded the Department of Sociology at the Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi in 1959.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kayastha</span> Community of India

Kayastha or Kayasth denotes a cluster of disparate Indian communities broadly categorised by the regions of the Indian subcontinent in which they were traditionally located—the Chitraguptavanshi Kayasthas of North India, the Chandraseniya Kayastha Prabhus of Maharashtra, the Bengali Kayasthas of Bengal and Karanas of Odisha. All of them were traditionally considered "writing castes", who had historically served the ruling powers as administrators, ministers and record-keepers.

Sanskritisation is a term in sociology which refers to the process by which castes or tribes placed lower in the caste hierarchy seek upward mobility by emulating the rituals and practices of the dominant castes or upper castes. It is a process similar to 'passing' in sociological terms. This term was made popular by Indian sociologist M. N. Srinivas in the 1950s. Sanskritisation has in particular been observed among mid-ranked members of caste-based social hierarchies.

The Meo people are an ethnic Muslim Rajput group from the Mewat region of north-western India.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Caste system in India</span> Social stratification practiced in India

The caste system in India is the paradigmatic ethnographic instance of social classification based on castes. It has its origins in ancient India, and was transformed by various ruling elites in medieval, early-modern, and modern India, especially in the aftermath of the collapse of the Mughal Empire and the establishment of the British Raj. It is today the basis of affirmative action programmes in India as enforced through its constitution. The caste system consists of two different concepts, varna and jati, which may be regarded as different levels of analysis of this system.

Yadav, Jadam, or Jadav refers to a grouping of traditionally non-elite, peasant-pastoral communities or castes in India that since the 19th and 20th centuries have claimed descent from the mythological king Yadu as a part of a movement of social and political resurgence. The term Yadav now covers many traditional peasant-pastoral castes such as Ahirs of the Hindi belt and the Gavli of Maharashtra.

Kumar Suresh Singh (1935–2006) commonly known as K. S. Singh, was an Indian Administrative Service officer, who served as a Commissioner of Chhotanagpur (1978–80) and Director-General of the Anthropological Survey of India. He is known principally for his oversight and editorship of the People of India survey and for his studies of tribal history.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">G. S. Ghurye</span> Founder of Indian sociology (1893–1983)

Govind Sadashiv Ghurye was a pioneering Indian academic who was a professor of sociology. In 1924, he became the second person to head the Department of Sociology at the University of Bombay. And, is widely regarded as the founder of Indian Sociology & Sociology in India.

Baidya or Vaidya is a Bengali Hindu community located in the Bengal region of Indian subcontinent. A caste (jāti) of Ayurvedic physicians, the Baidyas have long had pre-eminence in society alongside Brahmins and Kayasthas. In the colonial era, the Bhadraloks were drawn primarily, but not exclusively, from these three upper castes, who continue to maintain a collective hegemony in West Bengal.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yalavarthi Naveen Babu</span>

Yalavarthi Naveen Babu, or simply Naveen, was a Naxalite leader in India.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">J. P. S. Uberoi</span> Indian sociologist and anthropologist (1934–2024)

Jitendra Pal Singh Uberoi was an Indian sociologist and philosophical anthropologist. He was a Professor of Sociology from the Delhi School of Economics. Uberoi is credited with contributions toward establishing sociology as a discipline of study in post-colonial India and also non-western reading of the west, including the study of the history and anthropology of science and European modernity.

Gloria Goodwin Raheja is American anthropologist who specializes in ethnographic history. She is the author of several historical works where she explores the concepts of caste and gender in India, colonialism, politics of representation, blues music, capitalism in the Appalachia and other diverse topics. Raheja argues that caste stratification in India was influenced by British colonialism. Monographs on ethnographic history and India have been considered "acclaimed" by the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute.

Ramkrishna Mukherjee was a scientist at the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, President of the Indian Sociological Society (1973–75) and recipient of the Indian Sociological Society's Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005.

Akshay Ramanlal Desai was an Indian sociologist, Marxist and a social activist. He was Professor and Head of the Department of Sociology in University of Bombay in 1967. He is particularly known for his work Social Background of Indian Nationalism in which he offered a Marxist analysis of the genesis of Indian nationalism making use of history, which set a path to build socialism in India.

References

  1. Celarent, Barbara (May 2012). "The Remembered Village by M. N. Srinivas: A Review" (PDF). American Journal of Sociology. 117 (6): 1870–1878. doi:10.1086/666522 . Retrieved 16 November 2016.
  2. Beals, A. R. (1 January 1978). "The remembered village as ethnography". Contributions to Indian Sociology. 12 (1): 109–115. doi:10.1177/006996677801200111. S2CID   143503162.
  3. Srinivas, M.N. (1 January 1978). "The remembered village: reply to criticisms". Contributions to Indian Sociology. 12 (1): 127–152. doi:10.1177/006996677801200113. S2CID   144392124.
  4. Joshi, P.C. (1 January 1978). "The remembered village: A bridge between old and new anthropology". Contributions to Indian Sociology. 12 (1): 75–89. doi:10.1177/006996677801200108. S2CID   143833998.
  5. Celarent, Barbara (May 2012). "The Remembered Village by M. N. Srinivas: A Review" (PDF). American Journal of Sociology. 117 (6): 1873. doi:10.1086/666522 . Retrieved 16 November 2016.
  6. Srinivas, M. N. (2012). The remembered village (2nd ed.). New Delhi: Oxford University Press. p. 2. ISBN   9780198077459.
  7. Srinivas, M. N. (2012). The remembered village (2nd ed.). New Delhi: Oxford University Press. p. 9. ISBN   9780198077459.
  8. Srinivas, M. N. (2012). The remembered village (2nd ed.). New Delhi: Oxford University Press. ISBN   9780198077459.
  9. Srinivas, M. N. (2012). The remembered village (2nd ed.). New Delhi: Oxford University Press. p. 196. ISBN   9780198077459.
  10. Epstein, T. S. (1 January 1978). "The remembered village: a modern classic". Contributions to Indian Sociology. 12 (1): 71–72. doi:10.1177/006996677801200107. S2CID   145819843.
  11. Pocock, D.F. (1 January 1978). "The remembered village: a failure". Contributions to Indian Sociology. 12 (1): 62–64. doi:10.1177/006996677801200106. S2CID   144250802.
  12. Cross, Jamie (5 September 2013). "Book Review: The Remembered Village by M.N. Srinivas". LSE Review of Books. Retrieved 16 November 2016.

Further reading