Religion and Society among the Coorgs of South India

The aim of this dissertation is to focus on the historical and cultural factors responsible for female infanticide in Punjab. It is a state with one of the worst sex ratios in the country, with the national average being 940 females for 1000 males (Census of India 2011). The systematic killing of the girl child has produced several reactions. Academic journals and books, governmental reports, film, cinema, theatre and television have all devoted attention to this discrimination against the girl child that begins in the womb itself. However, what many of these works miss is the question of ‘continuity’. Why does female infanticide, first documented in a systematic manner by the British colonial state continue to exist today? The purpose of this thesis, hence, is to highlight the continuity of the practice of killing of the girl child. It aims to trace historically the prevalence of female infanticide in Punjab and the colonial efforts in this direction. Also, how did women themselves perceive this practice? What accounts for its continuity in the region with infanticide being replaced by feticide? This dissertation, hence, wishes to trace the historical and legal precedents of this practice in colonial India. This will demonstrate not just the historical roots of this practice but also provide a more nuanced understanding of its continuation in contemporary India as well.

This dissertation is part of the current of thought that aims at reintegrating social identity and institutions in the economic analysis. The first chapter presents a model that describes segregation as one of the equilibria arising from un an unequal distribution of power and without having to specify segregationist preferences. In a second chapter, caste is shown to have a strong impact on the way Scheduled Castes and Tribes perceive their social status. However, other factors such as occupation or income also have an impact on perceived social status. The third chapter shows that there is a relationship between the number of crimes against Scheduled Castes and Tribes and the way water is distributed, thereby evidencing that untouchability practices are still vigorous, despite being outlawed by the Constitution. This suggests that some groups may be excluded from accessing public goods in India that turn out to be club goods. This is further investigated in chapter 4 where results strongly suggest that there is caste patronage in accessing publicly provided goods. In conclusion, we set forth an agenda for future research that resolves around better understanding social identities formation a well as the reasons for their rise.

If women marry younger than men, increased population growth causes a sur- plus of women in the marriage market. This paper introduces search frictions into a matching model with transferable utility and age-dependent match payos to study if this so-called marriage squeeze has caused a dowry \ination in India. Using data from Karnataka it is shown that the observed shifts in the age distributions and sex ratio of unmarried men and women during the marriage squeeze lead to higher dowries conditional on the partners' ages. A GMM estimate of the model parameters suggests that average dowries have increased as well. (JEL C78, J12, O18)

We have been concerned about the low levels of use of software localised to Nepali and conducted a survey to find out just how widely the Nepali software platforms were being used and what determined their use or otherwise. We carried out interviews across Nepal to analyse this, using grounded theory. Nepali software is not widely used, and we found two areas which accounted for this. Firstly, the interface was difficult to use because keyboards were not marked in Devanagari, and because the translations were thought to be too formal and Sanskritised. Secondly, users worked as socio-economic groups, wanting to use the same interface as those around them so as to share knowledge and data. The English interface is valued more highly, with the Nepali interface only valued for those in rural areas who could not understand English. We suggest various actions that could be undertaken to overcome these barriers to use.

De todos os temas que hao fascinado e dividido os indologos, o da casta tem sido, sem sombra de duvidas, um dos mais discutidos, visto que representa, nos diz Louis Dumont, o oposto a nossa ocidentalizada moral e rebelde a nossa inteligencia, ao mesmo tempo em que representa o que ha de mais vivo e forte da antiga tradicao indiana. Diante deste fato, objetivamos analisar as castas indianas com um novo olhar, e um olhar motivado pelos escritos de Dumont, sempre contrapondo sua analise com diversos autores, os quais ora rechacam sua teoria, ora a aceitam via deducao logica ou empirismo.

The utility from some commodities depends on the allocation rule used to distribute them because, by the acquisition of such a commodity, a person tries to gain with its other recipients. Such a commodity is called an association good and it is shown that its existence can jeopardize the economist's standard model of markets. For example, demand may not equal supply in equilibrium and the very use of the price mechanism to distribute an association good could diminish its value. These and other properties are illustrated by analyzing some specific association goods, like club memberships and school admissions. Copyright 1989 by Royal Economic Society.

In recent years, a large body of literature has explored the relative roles of bilateral reciprocity and centralized authority in enforcing cooperative behavior. These are, of course, the two most prominent institutional alternatives discussed since the time of Hobbes. More recently, scholars such as Axelrod (1986) and Ellickson (1987) have drawn attention to a third alternative: social norms.

Animal biotechnology development is strongly related to historical contexts of animal production in a country and the receiving environment, particularly the existing cultural ecology. Cultural ecology influences both progress and process of adoption of such technology. A simulation on the technology’s discriminating power indicates that only those with sufficient techno-economic and social capability have greater possibility to adopt such a technology. Key words: Biotechnology, cultural ecology, adoption

Cet article evalue l'impact du regime colonial sur les relations intersexe dans une petite communaute, definie comme patrilineaire, les Coorges, groupe de proprietaires terriens a traditions guerrieres. Il y est suggere que, bien que la transformation peut etre une consequence non calculee du processus historique de changement affectant la base socio-economique et politique de la societe, elle peut egalement avoir ete generee a travers des decrets legislatifs et administratifs deliberes. L'assujetissement des populations indigenes a recquis, de la part de l'Etat colonial, une codification des systemes juridiques indigenes. Dans le cadre de leur codification et de leur ecriture, les lois coutumieres furent reinterpretees et a reformulees et, du fait de la conception des relations intersexes prevalente chez les administrateurs coloniaux, les femmes perdirent la plupart de leurs aires traditionnelles d'influence

of modern society have learned to look for the symbolic meaning of any given social practice and for the contribution of the practice to the integrity and solidarity of the group that employs it. However, in directing their attention away from the individual to the group, these students seem to have neglected a theme that is presented in Durkheim's chapter on the soul (1954: 240-272). There he suggests that the individual's personality can be seen as one apportionment of the collective mana, and that (as he implies in later chapters) the rites performed to representations of the social collectivity will sometimes be performed to the individual himself. In this paper I want to explore some of the senses in which the person in our urban secular world is allotted a kind of sacredness that is displayed and confirmed by symbolic acts. An attempt will be made to build a conceptual scaffold by stretching and twisting some common anthropological terms. This will be used to support two concepts which I think are central to this area, deference and demeanor. Through these reformulations I will try to show that a version of Durkheim's social psychology can be effective in modern dress. Data for the paper are drawn chiefly from a brief observational study of mental patients in a modern research hospital.' I use these data on the assumption that a logical place to learn about personal proprieties is among persons who have been locked up for spectacularly failing to maintain them. Their infractions of propriety occur in the confines of a ward, but the rules broken are quite general ones, leading us outward from the ward to a general study of

IN THIS essay I wish to examine the proposition that the main function of the Dravidian kinship categories is to regulate marriage and sexual relations inside bilateral and largely endogamous 'kindreds. The proposition is discussed mainly in the context of Sinhalese kinship, but the argument has bearing upon the kinship systems of other groups in South India and Ceylon, and the comparative evidence is examined in the last section of the essay.1 The Dravidian terminology we are here concerned with has been noted for its connection with a prescriptive, bilateral, cross-cousin marriage rule. In this respect, the terminology is highly systematic, and all the terms imply bilateral cross-cousin marriage, and such marriage is essential if the categories of kinship are to be kept in order (Dumont 1953). While the kinship categories are thus highly systematic, Sinhalese society, in particular, has been referred to as loosely (Ryan 1953:21). I suggest in this essay that the apparently loose kinship structure, while certainly permissive in many important respects, is very highly structured with regard to marriage and sexual relations. In the Sinhalese context, the kindred is not simply an amorphous group, which differs from individual to individual, but has an identity as a kin group and exhibits considerable solidarity in diverse contexts. It is the most important social group as far as the individual Sinhalese is concerned. And thus, the systematic kinship categories organize the vital relations of marriage and sex within these small groups. This argument regarding Dravidian kinship categories is supported by the relevant material from other groups in South India and Ceylon as well. If the kindred type explanation of systematic Dravidian categories, and prescriptive marriage rules, stands up to analysis, our conclusions will have implications for the Australian material. For, as is well known, the Dravidian terminology is almost identical with the Kariera type, and what is true for South India and Ceylon may also apply to some features of the kinship systems of Australia.

Este artigo examina o cenário da antropologia contemporânea mediante o contraste entre quatro livros publicados nos últimos anos, dois nos Estados Unidos (After the Fact, de Clifford Geertz, e Making PCR, de Paul Rabinow) e dois na Índia (Pathways, de T. N. Madan, e Critical Events, de Veena Das). A comparação é realizada no contexto de uma breve etnografia das livrarias norte-americanas, na qual se avaliam algumas publicações recentes, assim como a reclassificação de disciplinas tradicionais. O papel indispensável dos autores e obras considerados clássicos é examinado no contexto atual, finalizando com uma agenda para reflexão sobre as possibilidades de comunicação entre antropólogos de várias origens e vertentes.

This paper is, first, a structural analysis demonstrating that in Hindu sacred law death rites reflect a conception of kinship wherein intimacy is affected not only by such matters as genealogical distance, but also by differences in spiritual purity among kinsmen. Second, the paper shows that structural analysis of particular civilizations have more than intrinsic value, that they are also a necessary adjunct to highly generalfunctional theories. [India; religion; kinship; structural analysis; functionalism ].

Over the past dozen years, Indian, British and American social anthropologists have studied more than a score of Hindu villages in India. Their reports have been descriptions of caste, leadership, government, factionalism, economic and social change. There have been a few studies also of village religion, family life, kinship, and personality.

This study explores the ritual enactments of the Bene Israel and Baghdadi Jewish communities in Bombay, India during Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. By comparing and contrasting the ritual enactments of the two communities against each other, the norm, and various faiths in India, their acculturation and hybridization in India is displayed and expressed as Sephardic Jewry. The results demonstrate that the religious life of the Bene Israel and Baghdadi Jews resembles that of other Mizrachi or Jews, that is, rites were superimposed on older, ancestral Jewish customs, with additional contributions from their respective locales. The study argues that the Bene Israel and Baghdadi Jews have not lost their Jewish identity by adapting to their host country and culture; rather, they have developed and nurtured a finely balanced and unique Indo-Judaic identity through a demonstrative cultural and religious inclusion of their neighbors. This article explores the religious and social hybridization among the Bene Israel and Baghdadi Jewish communities in Bombay (officially Mumbai since 1995) as observed during the holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur in 2000.1 In it I argue that unlike society, which was based on the strict Hindu social stratum or caste system, the Jews of India-the Baghdadi, Bene Israel, and Keralite (Cochin) communities-maintained and, to an extent, cultured their religious identity as both citizens and Jews through their incorporation of certain domestic or practices into their public display and observance of Judaism. My findings demonstrate that the religious life of the Bene Israel and Baghdadi Jews resembles that of other Mizrachi or Jews. Specifically, traditional rites were superimposed on older, ancestral Jewish customs, with additional contributions from their respective locales. Rather than isolating themselves, the Jews of India have stayed in contact with other (Jewish) communities, justifying their recognition as unique Indian Eastern Sephardic Jews. The term literally refers to descendants of Jews expelled from the Iberian Peninsula during the end of the 15* century who follow religious customs and laws based on Babylonian tradition. The connotation is used to describe only Jews from the Middle East, North Africa, and several (former) Ladino-speaking nations in the Mediterranean. I use the termEastern because the present communities originating from various regions in the Middle East, North Africa, South and Southeast Asia all share unique customs and rituals differing from Jews classified or identified as Sephardim. This expanded definition of Sephardim demonstrates the relatively narrow perception or concept of a culture commonly believed to be unique to those of Arabic, Portuguese, or Spanish (speaking) descent. Jewish life in India highlights the distinguishing facets of both Indie and Judaic cultures that have enabled Jews to live amicably for so long in India, fully as Indians (if they desired), while at the same time preserving their Jewish ancestry to the best of their ability. The Jews of India, particularly because of their isolation and rejecting certain external influences, have become contributors and members of an expanded family of Jews from regions in the East including Afghanistan, Burma, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Pakistan, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey, and Yemen, among others. These Jewish communities all share rites based on the common or accepted definition of Sephardim but have hybridized certain elements of their ancestry and locale into their observance of Judaism, while still observing halakha (Jewish law), thus requiring an expanded definition of Sephardic. Rather than being identified by their observance of Judaism, Diasporic or minority Jewish communities frequently are grouped together by their nationality, thus eliminating them from the two traditional strains of Jewish heritage: Sephardi and Ashkenazi (Jews of Central and/or Eastern European ancestry). …

This paper examines the design and technique of the Kanchipuram sari in order to demonstrate the unity in cultural practice and technical design (hitherto disassociated) as found among the Padma Saliyar community of weavers in Tamil Nadu. 1 Its goal is to locate design integrally into the discourse of culture by showing how the silk wedding sari, when worn or gifted, is related to the auspiciousness of events and persons, not merely on the surface, but in its very design concept. In other words, the present study will show that the cultural value of auspiciousness is intrinsically related, both to an instrumental activity, weaving, and to a seemingly rational sphere, the korvai design technique of the Kanchipuram saris, handwoven in a special manner that distinguishes them as unstitched garments. Unlike fabric produced as continuous yardage, each sari is woven as a complete garment unit with an inner and outer surface, top and bottom, front and back, which are in a determinate relationship to one another. I will show how the “design,” viewed as the unity of opposed elements, of the Kanchipuram sari emerges in the korvai technique of weaving the sari. The etymology of the Tamil term korvai reveals that the technique is characterized by a “unity” and “opposition” of elements. The korvai design of opposed borders “joined” to the main body of the sari, it will be seen, mirrors the cultural value expressed in the Tamil term for auspiciousness, raasi, also viewed as involving the conjunction of opposed elements. Even the practice of weaving will be seen to enhance the auspiciousness of the sari when it is woven by weavers specializing in the same. Using the case of the Kanchipuram sari, this paper will highlight the crucial link between design and the pursuit of auspiciousness (as an individual and/or collective goal of life) in artisanal praxis 2 anywhere.