The Poison in the Gift: Ritual, Prestation, and the Dominant Caste in a North Indian Village - Couverture souple

Raheja, Gloria Goodwin Goodwin

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 0226707296 ISBN 13 : 9780226707297

Editeur : University of Chicago Press, 1988

Synopsis

The Poison in the Gift is a detailed ethnography of gift-giving in a North Indian village that powerfully demonstrates a new theoretical interpretation of caste. Introducing the concept of ritual centrality, Raheja shows that the position of the dominant landholding caste in the village is grounded in a central-peripheral configuration of castes rather than a hierarchical ordering. She advances a view of caste as semiotically constituted of contextually shifting sets of meanings, rather than one overarching ideological feature. This new understanding undermines the controversial interpretation advanced by Louis Dumont in his 1966 book, Homo Hierarchicus, in which he proposed a disjunction between the ideology of hierarchy based on the "purity" of the Brahman priest and the "temporal power" of the dominant caste or the king.

A propos du livre

Présentation de l'éditeur

The Poison in the Gift is a detailed ethnography of gift-giving in a North Indian village that powerfully demonstrates a new theoretical interpretation of caste. Introducing the concept of ritual centrality, Raheja shows that the position of the dominant landholding caste in the village is grounded in a central-peripheral configuration of castes rather than a hierarchical ordering. She advances a view of caste as semiotically constituted of contextually shifting sets of meanings, rather than one overarching ideological feature. This new understanding undermines the controversial interpretation advanced by Louis Dumont in his 1966 book, Homo Hierarchicus, in which he proposed a disjunction between the ideology of hierarchy based on the "purity" of the Brahman priest and the "temporal power" of the dominant caste or the king.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: University of Chicago Press
• Date d'édition: 1988
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0226707296
• ISBN 13: 9780226707297
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 300
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible