Author: Andre Beteille
Publisher: Penguin
Year: 2006
Language: English
Pages: 274
ISBN/UPC (if available): 0143062018
Description
One of the pioneers of sociological studies in India, Professor André Béteille has, over the past four decades, contributed a series of topical and stimulating articles to various newspapers. Some of these articles were collected in the book Chronicles of Our Time, published a few years ago. Ideology and Social Science is a new and riveting collection of Professor Béteille’s writings on Indian society, politics and culture.
The fifty articles in this book cover a very wide range of subjects: from the practice of sociology to the prospects of political liberalism, from contemporary debates about caste and caste quotas to old and still persisting myths about what is said to constitute the essence of Indian culture. Béteille’s ambit includes the relevant and important themes of secularism, diversity and unity in cultures, the culture of tolerance, discrimination at work, value systems in the changing Indian family, and caste practices in village communities.
Steering clear of passing intellectual trends as well as partisan politics, Béteille reaches his conclusions based on a careful examination of the evidence, not on a search for facts that fit a preconceived theory. Through his writings, he makes a cogent and passionate appeal to separate sociological theory from the frameworks of social activism.
For students of sociology as well as the general reader, this is a book that will stimulate thought and generate interest in social and political issues that are at the core of India’s modernity and tradition.
REVIEW
Amartya Sen has recently given us The Argumentative Indian; and now, in your hands, is André Béteille’s equally compelling collection of essays on Indian ideas, themes and debates.
-Ramachandra Guha
Contents
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
FOREWORD: THE WISEST MAN (STILL) IN INDIA
By Ramachandra Guha
IDEOLOGY AND SOCIAL SCIENCE
Alternative Sciences
Sociology and Ideology
Myth and History
Teaching and Research
Macaulay, Marx and Madrasas
Wages of Partisanship
RELIGION, LANGUAGE AND CULTURE
Religion and Society
Hinduism in Danger?
Secularism re-examined
Secularization of Work
Clash of Civilizations
Speaking and Writing
Editorial Vandalism
VILLAGE, CASTE AND FAMILY
Village Republics
Caste and Colonial rule
Race and Caste
Inter-Caste Marriage
The Changing Indian Family
Privacy and Secrecy
THE INDIAN IDENTITY
Diversity and Unity
India’s Identity
Two Indias?
The Politics of Resentment
Pluralism and Liberalism
Modernity and Tradition
Modernity and its alternatives
INEQUALITY AND CLASS
The Promise of Equality
End of Inequality?
Poverty and Inequality
The working Class
The Indian Middle Class
The Russian Intelligentsia
Normative Convergence
DISCRIMINATION AND RESERVATION
Tolerance and Exclusion
Coping with caste discrimination
Discrimination at work
From Hierarchy to Equality
The Checkerboards of Quotas
The Meritarian Principle
Public Institutions
Quotas for Companies
Affirmative Action Revisited
STATE AND CIVIL SOCIETY
Democracy and Development
Civil Society and Voluntary Action
The Third Section
Development as a Human Right
The executive and the judiciary
The administrative executive
Recasting the constitution