This volume provides readers an essential theoretical framework for understanding the processes of globalization and social transformation. It examines questions of tribe; caste; gender and the workplace; culture and change; and, urban sociology in tribal, peasant, and industrial societies. Key theoretical and empirical debates concerning urbanization, industrialization, and stratification in India are also discussed. The Preface, written especially for the paperback edition, situates these issues in the context of contemporary society and culture.
This book will be useful for students, teachers, and researchers of Indian politics, sociology, and history. Journalists, activists, and the interested lay reader will also find it engaging and informative.
`...the enterprise in its very conception contributes to the construction and development of the discipline of sociology in India...the book is a valuable addition to any student's or teacher's library.'---The Book Review
`...the volume grows out of a rare but necessary concern of some ...teachers of sociology, who...[ problematise] some key issues and debates concerning theory and society in India...An offbeat volume...which largely succeeds in its mission.---The Statesman
`The strength of this volume...lies in its avoiding the trap of a binary opposition by adopting a comparative historical perspective...Teacher[ s] of sociology in India will welcome the volume...'---Indian Review of Books
This book examines the key debates, both theoretical and empirical, in the fields of urbanization, industrialization and stratification in India. The essays in the volume engage with the problems of typologies--tribal, peasant and industrial--in order to rethink the issues of modernity and tradition. The authors problematize a vast array of literature on tribal, peasant and industrial sociology, grappling with conceptual problems caused by the uncritical application of theories germinated in the West to the Indian context. The primary assumption of all the essays is that the conventional binary opposition between primitive and modern, and the evolutionary schema of viewing the world in terms of First, Second and Third Worlds is redundant to our times. Keeping this in mind, the book provides an essential framework for understanding globalization.
The contributors to the volume attempt to engage with the discursive and volatile aspects of the discipline of sociology, enlivening and re-invigorating old debates through an understanding of questions teachers and students put to each other in classroom situations, thus enabling students to read sociology in a new and refreshing way. In a new Preface, the editor contextualizes the issues of tribe, caste, gender and work in tribal, peasant and industrial societies in the current scenario.
It is essential reading for students and teachers of sociology and anthropology, bureaucrats, administrators, social workers, journalists and the interested lay reader.
