Jaipur • New Delhi • Bengaluru • Guwahati • Kolkata
This collection of articles by well-known senior scholars highlight the multinational, historical and contextual nature of social inequality. The shaping of social stratification in terms of its dialectics, layers and levels of social relations is discussed around the three main foci, namely, theory, structure and process. Caste, class, family and individual are not only seen as units of social ranking, but are also viewed as notions implying a value-frame for guiding and shaping of consciousness and social relations.
How caste and class are interrelated and inhered into one another? How social mobility is realised and perceived as an asset? Who are the power elite? How can one identify them? What is the role of education in effecting changes in the caste system? What is the nature of social mobility among the weaker sections of Indian society such as the scheduled castes and the scheduled tribes? These and several other questions have been discussed in the volume.
The volume provides profiles of caste, class, power and social mobility highlighting conceptual and substantive issues. It should prove to be a handy source book for researchers, teachers and students of sociology and other social science disciplines.
1 Shaping of the Traditional Pattern of Stratification in India: An Analysis of Processes through the Ages / SHRIRAMA INDRADEVA
2 Stratification in Rgvedic Society: Evidence and Paradigms / SUVIRA JAISWAL
3 Sociologists and Inequality in India: The Historical Context / SATISH SABERWAL
4 The Reproduction of Inequality: Occupation, Caste and Family / ANDRE BETEILLE
5 Approaches to the Identification of Elites / SHEO KUMAR LAL
6 From Varna to Jati: The Indian Caste System, from the Asiatic to the Feudal Mode of Production / DIPANKAR GUPTA
7 Division and Hierarchy: An Overview of Caste in Gujarat / A.M. SHAH
8 Caste and Class: A Reinterpretation / VICTOR S. D’SOUZA
9 Caste and Class in Assam / R.K. BHADRA
10 Transformation of Class Structure in Contemporary Rural India / PRADIP KUMAR BOSE
11 Nature of Class Conflict in the Indian Society / V.M. DANDEKAR
12 Green Revolution and Social Inequalities in Rural India / D.N. DHANAGARE
13 Social Stratification in an Orissa Village / JAGANATH PATHY
14 Power Elite in Rural India: Some Questions and Clarifications / K.L. SHARMA
15 Occupational Mobility of Castes in a North Indian Village / K.N. SHARMA
16 Stratification among Tribals in Gujarat / PRADIP KUMAR BOSE
17 Struggle of the Chamar Peasants for the Removal of Social Disabilities in a Feudal Estate (Uniara Thikana) in Rajasthan, 1946-47 / VIJAY KUMAR VASHISHTHA
18 Social Mobility and Status-Identification among the Scheduled Castes: A Synoptic View / NANDU RAM
19 Open Education and Closed Society: A Study of Social and Educational Inequalities in Contemporary India / EHSANUL HAQ
20 The Indian Institutes of Technology: Do they Contribute to Social Mobility? / C. RAJAGOPALAN AND JASPAL SINGH
K.L. Sharma is Vice-Chancellor of Jaipur National University, Jaipur. Formerly, he was Professor of Sociology and Rector (Pro-Vice-Chancellor) at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He was also Vice-Chancellor of Rajasthan University from 2003 to 2005 and Visiting Professor at College de France, Paris, for five times, between 1991 and 2006. Author of more than 20 books and 70 research papers, he is widely read by students and teachers of Sociology and other Social Sciences.
