Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Recasting Caste: From the Sacred to the Profane

Recasting Caste: From the Sacred to the Profane The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, 2016 Vol. 17, Nos. 3–4, pp. 359–380 Book Reviews HIRA SINGH New Delhi, Sage, 2014 Hira Singh’s Recasting Caste presents the most sophisticated Marxist anthropology of caste in India to date. Singh’s thesis is strikingly simple: caste, far from embodying a cultural or religious principle of hierarchy, ought to be understood as the social relations of production in the Indian subcontinent. The social relations of production, as we know from Marx’s The German Ideology, are linked dialectically to the mode of production. In other words, political-economic and sociocultural aspects of a given context are tied inextricably to each other, and, as the author shows with examples from his own fieldwork, we can study these interconnected aspects as empirical rather than metaphysical realities. Empirically, caste relations vary across time and space, preventing us from generalising from ancient Vedic texts to the present or from a particular fieldsite to the entire subcontinent. Deftly combining personal experiences and fieldwork data in rural north India with evidence from social histor- ians of ancient and medieval South Asia, Recasting Caste is both ambitious and compelling. Hira Singh’s contribution ought to be situated within a wave of contemporary scho- http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology Taylor & Francis

Recasting Caste: From the Sacred to the Profane

Chandra, Uday
The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology , Volume 17 (3-4): 3 – Aug 7, 2016
Download PDF

Recasting Caste: From the Sacred to the Profane

Abstract

The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, 2016 Vol. 17, Nos. 3–4, pp. 359–380 Book Reviews HIRA SINGH New Delhi, Sage, 2014 Hira Singh’s Recasting Caste presents the most sophisticated Marxist anthropology of caste in India to date. Singh’s thesis is strikingly simple: caste, far from embodying a cultural or religious principle of hierarchy, ought to be understood as the social relations of production in the Indian subcontinent. The social relations of...
Loading next page...
 
/lp/taylor-francis/recasting-caste-from-the-sacred-to-the-profane-orxYX21Sj0
Publisher
Taylor & Francis
Copyright
© 2016, Uday Chandra
ISSN
1740-9314
eISSN
1444-2213
DOI
10.1080/14442213.2015.1125769
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, 2016 Vol. 17, Nos. 3–4, pp. 359–380 Book Reviews HIRA SINGH New Delhi, Sage, 2014 Hira Singh’s Recasting Caste presents the most sophisticated Marxist anthropology of caste in India to date. Singh’s thesis is strikingly simple: caste, far from embodying a cultural or religious principle of hierarchy, ought to be understood as the social relations of production in the Indian subcontinent. The social relations of production, as we know from Marx’s The German Ideology, are linked dialectically to the mode of production. In other words, political-economic and sociocultural aspects of a given context are tied inextricably to each other, and, as the author shows with examples from his own fieldwork, we can study these interconnected aspects as empirical rather than metaphysical realities. Empirically, caste relations vary across time and space, preventing us from generalising from ancient Vedic texts to the present or from a particular fieldsite to the entire subcontinent. Deftly combining personal experiences and fieldwork data in rural north India with evidence from social histor- ians of ancient and medieval South Asia, Recasting Caste is both ambitious and compelling. Hira Singh’s contribution ought to be situated within a wave of contemporary scho-

Journal

The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology – Taylor & Francis

Published: Aug 7, 2016

There are no references for this article.