Author: T N Madan
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Year: 2000
Language: English
Pages: 290
ISBN/UPC (if available): 0195636503
Description
This collection of essays provides illuminating introductions to the discipline of anthropology and explores major contributions to the study of Indian society.
Intellectual traditions grow through a process of critical assessment and this book is one such contribution to the study of society in India.
In the first part of the book, Prof. Madan critically examines the work of several outstanding scholars who have been pathfinders in distinctive ways. In dealing with the works of D P Mukerji, M N Srinivas, Louis Dumont, and others, he comments on a range of methods and perspectives including functionalism, structuralism, and Marxism.
The second part of the book explores the idea of anthropology as the mutual interpretation of culture, with illustrations from Prof. Madan's fieldwork and other writings that reveal the method of such understanding.
EXCERPTS FROM REVIEWS:
Pathways is certainly an important book for those who do not want to be left by the wayside, for it contains a comprehensive but analytical study of some f the approaches to study Indian society in the last fifty years.
- Indian Journal of Social Work
Explores some major contributions to the study of Indian society and presents a lucid exposition of his own conception of social anthropology.
- Man
Contents
Preface
acknowledgements
Notes on Epigraphs
PART ONE: PATHFINDERS
Tradition and Modernity in the Sociology
D N Majumdar on the Development of Cultures
An Introduction to M N Srinivas's Oeuvre
Louis Dumont and the Study of Society in India
Images of India in American Anthropology
PART TWO: IN SEARCH OF A PATH: A PERSONAL ACCOUNT
On living Intimately with Strangers
On the Mutual Interpretation of Cultures
On Critical Self-Awareness
The Social Construction of Cultural Identities in Rural Kashmir
Two Faces of Bengali Ethnicity: Bengali Muslim or Muslim Bengali
Asia and the Modern West: Indian and Japanese Responses to Westernization
References
Index