Caste, Class, and Power: Changing Patterns of Stratification in a Tanjore Village

Caste, Class and Power is an intensive study of the changing patterns of social stratification in a multi-caste village in South India. This village provides the background for this unusual description of contemporary change in a traditional society reacting to outside pressures. The transformation in the village takes the direction of a more open social system. Previously, village social life was shaped by its division into three caste groups: the Brahmins, the middle-level Non-Brahmins, and the Adi-Dravidas. The caste of a villager determined his position in the class system and power hierarchy, and caste itself was acquired only by birth. Professor Beteille shows how new forces are disrupting the existing pattern and producing economic and political systems that no longer depend entirely on caste. He concludes that the caste structure, once the basis of traditional order, does not afford an adequate framework for the analysis of Indian village society today. The author seeks to provide a more differentiated analytical scheme for the study of social change in India. This, the second, edition has additional matter on the genre of village studies: a retrospective of the author's experiences, and a review of the different ways in which caste and class have been studied. It also examines the role of temples in social organisation. The book ends with the author's description of fieldwork in this village. This book will be of interest to anthropologists and other social scientists concerned with Indian rural life and modernisation, political change and economic development.