IDEOLOGY and SOCIAL SCIENCE

IDEOLOGY and SOCIAL SCIENCE

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Book Specification

Item Code: IDG098
Author: ANDRE BETEILLE
Publisher: Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd.
Language: English
Edition: 2006
ISBN: 0143062018
Pages: 274
Cover: Paperback
Other Details 8" X 5"
Weight 290 gm

Book Description

About the Book:

One of the pioneers of sociological studies in India, Professor Andre Beteille has, over the past four decades, contributed a series of topical and stimulating articles to various newspaper. 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 Beteille's writings on Indian society, politics and culture.

The fifty articles in this book cover a very wide range of subject: 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. Beteille'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 s partisan politics, Beteille 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 sociology 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 any tradition.

About the Author:

Andre Beteille is Professor Emeritus of Sociology in the University of Delhi. He has held visiting appointments at Cambridge, the London School of Economics, Erasmus University, Rotterdam, and various other institutions in Europe and America. He was also a Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study, Berlin, and a Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities, Edinburgh. He was a Jawaharlal Nehru Fellow from 1968 to 1970, and received the Jawaharlal Nehru National Award of the Government of Madhya Pradesh in 1994.

Apart from his newspaper articles, he has published extensively in scholarly periodicals in India and abroad. His book include Caste, Class and Power, Studies in Agrarian Social Structure, and Society and Politics in India. The book of readings entitled Social Inequality,edited by him and published by Penguin Books in 1969, has been used in the teaching of sociology worldwide. A previous collection of newspaper articles was published by Penguin Books India in 2000 under the title Chronicles of Our Time.

Professor Beteille is a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute.

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS x
FOREWORD: THE WISEST MAN (STILL)
IN INDIA
xi
by Ramachandra Guha
I
Ideology and Social Science
1. Alternative Sciences 5
2. SOCIOLOGY AND IDEOLOGY 9
3. MYTH AND HISTORY 14
4. TEACHING AND RESEARCH 19
5. MACAULAY, MARX AND
MADRASAS
24
6. WAGES OF PARTISANSHIP 29
II
Religion, Language and Culture
7. RELIGION AND SOCIETY 39
8. HINDUISM IN DANGER? 44
9. SECULARISM RE-EXAMINED 49
10. SECULARIZATION OF WORK 54
11. CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS? 59
12. LANGUAGE AND CIVILIZATION 64
13. SPEAKING AND WRITING 69
14. EDITORIAL VANDALISM 73
III
Village, Caste and Family
15. VILLAGE REPUBLICS 81
16. CASTE AND COLONIAL RULE 86
17. RACE AND CASTE 91
18. INTER-CASTE MARRIAGE 96
19. THE CHANGING INDIAN
101
20. PRIVACY AND SECRECY 105
IV
The Indian Identity
21. DIVERSITY AND UNITY 113
22. INDIA'S IDENTITY 120
23. TWO INDIAS? 127
24. THE POLITICS OF
RESENTMENT
132
25. PLURALISM AND LIBERALISM 136
26. MODERNITY AND TRADITION 141
27. MODERNITY AND ITS
ALTERNATIVES
146
V
Inequality and Class
28. THE PROMISE OF EQUALITY 155
29. END OF INEQUALITY? 160
30. POVERTY AND INEQUALITY 165
31. THE WORKING CLASS 170
32. THE INDIAN MIDDLE CLASS 175
33. THE RUSSIAN INTELLIGENTSIA 180
34. NORMATIVE CONVERGENCE 185
VI
Discrimination and Reservation
35. TOLERANCE AND EXCLUSION 195
36. COPING WITH CASTE
DISCRIMINATION
200
37. DISCRIMINATION AT WORK 204
38. FROM HIERARCHY TO
EQUALITY
209
39. THE CHECKERBOARD OF
QUOTAS
214
40. THE MERITARIAN PRINCIPLE 219
41. PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS 224
42. QUOTAS FOR COMPANIES 229
43. AFFIRMATIVE ACTION
REVISITED
234
VII
State and Civil Society
44. DEMOCRACY AND
DEVELOPMENT
243
45. CIVIL SOCIETY AND VOLUNTARY
ACTION
248
46. THE THIRD SECTOR 253
47. DEVELOPMENT AS A HUMAN
RIGHT
257
48. THE EXECUTIVE AND THE
JUDICIARY
261
49. THE ADMINISTRATIVE
EXECUTIVE
266
50. RECASTING THE
CONSTITUTION
271


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