Social Structure and Change
Development and Ethnicity
SAGE Publications Inc (Publisher)
1st Edition
Published on 17. July 1997
Book
Hardback
260 pages
978-0-8039-9360-0 (ISBN)
Description
The contributors to this book analyze a number of problems facing contemporary Indian society, including: changes in patterns of land ownership; the impact of development efforts on ecosystems; and methodological problems involved in studying economic development and social change. There are also essays on ethnicity which discuss emerging ethnic movements and conflicts in South and Southeast Asia.
Reviews / Votes
`Students of third-world social problems will ..find much of interest in the case studies of this book. Many of the essays offer a range of interesting sociological questions andout Indian history, particularly regarding modes of subsistence, urbanisation and mordernisation. I was particularly impressed by Aurora's analysis of ecological constraints and the similarities and differences of production regimes, Baviskar's discussion of the organisation and politics of co-operatives, Sivakumar's and Sivakumar's dicsussion of the importance of participant observation and their critique of the ahistoricity of development models, and last but not least, Burman's analysis of the context and history of vocabularies used for the identification of caste and class...Collectively, the authors of the essays in Social Structure and Change pay their intellectual debt to an important contributor to the twentieth-century social science. The editing is well done and the essays are clearly written, offering a variety of analytical perspectives on development and ethnicity in India' - Environmental ValuesMore details
Series
Edition
First Edition
Language
English
Place of publication
Thousand Oaks
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Weight
433 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8039-9360-0 (9780803993600)
Copyright in bibliographic data is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or its licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
B S Baviskar was born in 1930 and grew up in Pilkhod village, Jalgaon District, Maharashtra. His father was a small farmer. After five years of primary school in Pilkhod, he attended high school in Chalisgaon, the nearest market town. He went on to complete a BA at Fergusson College in Pune and an MA in economics at the Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi. He then joined the new Department of Sociology, where he studied under M.N. Srinivas and M.S.A. Rao, two giants in the field.
For his PhD research, he pioneered the study of cooperatives in India. While many of his peers focused on village studies, he recognized the importance of institutions that were creating new linkages between local, regional, and national politics. He wrote about cooperative sugar factories, whose activities spanned dozens of villages, and also studied electoral politics involving competition for seats in the state assembly. Thus he also helped pioneer ethnographic research on politics at multiple interlocking levels.
Following his initial field research, Baviskar was appointed to teach in the department where he was trained, eventually becoming a professor and head of the Department of Sociology. He was elected president of the Indian Sociological Society and at various times held visiting appointments in Britain, the Netherlands, Egypt, and Canada. He was invited to study rural development in Britain by the Arkleton Trust and was the first Indian director of the International Rural Network. In 2000, after retiring from the university, he became a senior fellow at the Institute of Social Sciences (New Delhi), where he continued working until his death.
Baviskar and Attwood were friends and then research collaborators for more than forty years. They organized binational and multi-national team research projects on cooperatives and published the results in Who Shares? Cooperatives and Rural Development (1988) and Finding the Middle Path: The Political Economy of Cooperation in Rural India (1995).
Baviskar also collaborated with others, including his distinguished colleagues, A.M. Shah and E.A. Ramaswamy. Together they edited a five-volume collection of papers in honour of M.N. Srinivas: Social Structure and Change (1996-98). With his student, Shanti George, he studied dairy cooperatives in Gujarat and raised questions about Operation Flood, India's giant dairy development scheme. With George Mathew, director of the Institute of Social Sciences, he organized a team research project on the seventy-third constitutional amendment, published as Inclusion and Exclusion in Local Governance (2009). With Tulsi Patel he co-edited Understanding Indian Society (2010) in honour of A.M. Shah. He was also the series editor of Themes in Indian Sociology in seven volumes (2003-05).
Baviskar passed away in April 2013. He is survived by his wife, three children, three grandchildren, a sister, three brothers, and a large extended family.
For his PhD research, he pioneered the study of cooperatives in India. While many of his peers focused on village studies, he recognized the importance of institutions that were creating new linkages between local, regional, and national politics. He wrote about cooperative sugar factories, whose activities spanned dozens of villages, and also studied electoral politics involving competition for seats in the state assembly. Thus he also helped pioneer ethnographic research on politics at multiple interlocking levels.
Following his initial field research, Baviskar was appointed to teach in the department where he was trained, eventually becoming a professor and head of the Department of Sociology. He was elected president of the Indian Sociological Society and at various times held visiting appointments in Britain, the Netherlands, Egypt, and Canada. He was invited to study rural development in Britain by the Arkleton Trust and was the first Indian director of the International Rural Network. In 2000, after retiring from the university, he became a senior fellow at the Institute of Social Sciences (New Delhi), where he continued working until his death.
Baviskar and Attwood were friends and then research collaborators for more than forty years. They organized binational and multi-national team research projects on cooperatives and published the results in Who Shares? Cooperatives and Rural Development (1988) and Finding the Middle Path: The Political Economy of Cooperation in Rural India (1995).
Baviskar also collaborated with others, including his distinguished colleagues, A.M. Shah and E.A. Ramaswamy. Together they edited a five-volume collection of papers in honour of M.N. Srinivas: Social Structure and Change (1996-98). With his student, Shanti George, he studied dairy cooperatives in Gujarat and raised questions about Operation Flood, India's giant dairy development scheme. With George Mathew, director of the Institute of Social Sciences, he organized a team research project on the seventy-third constitutional amendment, published as Inclusion and Exclusion in Local Governance (2009). With Tulsi Patel he co-edited Understanding Indian Society (2010) in honour of A.M. Shah. He was also the series editor of Themes in Indian Sociology in seven volumes (2003-05).
Baviskar passed away in April 2013. He is survived by his wife, three children, three grandchildren, a sister, three brothers, and a large extended family.
Content
Introduction - B S Baviskar
Foxes, Lions and Bears - Pauline Kolenda
The Circulation of Land Ownership in Southernmost Tamil Nadu
Development Disdained and Development Engrained - David G Mandelbaum
The Cases of the Toda Tribe and Kerala State in South India
Ecology and Development in Arunachal Pradesh - G S Aurora
Milk and Sugar - B S Baviskar
A Comparative Analysis of Cooperative Politics
Rural Change, Social History and Participant Observation - Chitra Sivakumar and S S Sivakumar
Social Movements and State Response - T K Oommen
The Indian Situation
Criteria for Identification of Backward Classes - B K Roy Burman
Ethnicity - S C Dube
Myth, History, Politics
Ethnicity, Communialism and Class Conflict in India, Malaysia and Sri Lanka - V Selvaratnam
Their Implications for Nationhood
Emergence and Growth of Tribal Ethnicity in Chotanagpur - Sachchidananda
Foxes, Lions and Bears - Pauline Kolenda
The Circulation of Land Ownership in Southernmost Tamil Nadu
Development Disdained and Development Engrained - David G Mandelbaum
The Cases of the Toda Tribe and Kerala State in South India
Ecology and Development in Arunachal Pradesh - G S Aurora
Milk and Sugar - B S Baviskar
A Comparative Analysis of Cooperative Politics
Rural Change, Social History and Participant Observation - Chitra Sivakumar and S S Sivakumar
Social Movements and State Response - T K Oommen
The Indian Situation
Criteria for Identification of Backward Classes - B K Roy Burman
Ethnicity - S C Dube
Myth, History, Politics
Ethnicity, Communialism and Class Conflict in India, Malaysia and Sri Lanka - V Selvaratnam
Their Implications for Nationhood
Emergence and Growth of Tribal Ethnicity in Chotanagpur - Sachchidananda