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American Anthropologist

[69, 19671

ing. I n spite of my interest in the subject and my agreement with most of what the author has to say, this was not a book I could not put down after a few dozen pages. Finally, I was uneasy with one of the primary means of change evaluation, responses by the local people as to how much change had taken place rather than actual objective data. For instance, rather than giving data as to how many people actually began practicing family planning, the evaluators simply asked people after the campaign if they were or were not in favor of such action and reported the percentages. All in all, however, I highly recommend the book as an important contribution to the literature on socioeconomic change.

ters: Sanskritization, Westernization, Some Expressions of Caste Mobility, Secularization, Some Thoughts on the Study of Ones Own Society. The argument of these chapters is richly developed, but I will make a partial summary of it. Contrary to stereotyped views of the caste system, Srinivas claims that caste hierarchies were never fixed, nor were they unambiguous with regard to the relative positions of local caste groups. The illusion of fixity and clarity stemmed from an ideological model that classified castes by uarna as Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya, and Shiidra. The model was employed in the rhetoric of caste conflicts, and for this and other reasons it became increasingly popular during British rule. For example, newly organized caste associations responded to the issue of Communication and Development: A Study of Two recording castes in the early censuses by making Indian Villages. Y . V. LAKSAMANA RAO. Min- contlicting claims to higher rank, classifying themneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1966. selves at different times as members of different 145 pp., appendix, bibliography, index. $4.50. varna. I n traditional local and regional caste hierarchies, Rsriswcd by AND& B$TEILLE, Ddhi School of Economics dominance was based upon multiple criteria, includThis book is based on a comparative study of two ing land ownership, strength of numbers, political villages in Andhra Pradesh, South India, in each of influence, and ritual purity. That castes made comwhich the author spent about two months. The two peting claims to superiority was not exceptional, hut villages are called Pathuru (Old Village) and the typical product of a dynamic system in which Kothuru (New Village), the names being chosen to there is some pushing and jostling in the attempt to signify contrasts in the extent to which they have get ahead (p. 5). Caste groups whose political and been exposed to change. They are similar in size and economic fortunes flourished attempted to close the certain other demographic features. The study gap between their rising secular status and their presents certain broad conclusions regarding the presumedly fixed ritual status by Sanskritizing their relationship between communication and social ritual practices. Sanskritization was (and is) thc change. It is likely to appeal more to readers with a emulation of the life style of a higher caste as a way general interest in rural India than to professional of legitimatizing social rank by claiming a higher state of being in the divine scheme of the universe. anthropologists. The models that an upwardly mobile caste might Smd Change in M o d e r n India. M. N. SRINNAS. emulate varied according to the styles of the domi(The Rabmdranath Tagore Memorial Lecture- nant caste or castes in its locality. Thus, Sanskrilizaship, delivered at the University of California, tion sometimes meant adopting the manners of Berkeley, May 1963.) Berkeley and Los Angela: wamor-princes, of merchants, or of peasant land University of California Press, 1966. xv, 194 pp., owners, but Srinivas claims that the most influential models were puritanical Brahmin castes. I n any index, notes, reading list. $5.00. case, the traditional society accommodated social Ranewed by CHARLES LESLIE, mobility without itself undergoing structural change. New York University In contrast to Sanskritization, Westernization Professor Srinivas book is a model of scholarship, entails processes of structural change. One major His subject is significant, his style graceful, his at- change has been an increase in the horizontal titude both modest and authoritative. He draws solidarity of caste groups over large areas, and a upon the diverse body of current research, using corresponding decline in the vertical solidarity benew evidence with ingenuity and precision to refine tween local castes. The traditional society mainconcepts that have become his intellectual trade- tained the vertical solidarity of local castes within mark. Although he assume9 a knowledgeable regional systems held in equilibrium by balanced audience, his text is self-explanatory and will be- oppositions of power a t progressively inclusive levels come a primary source for those who seek an intro- of hieratic political structures. (If this sounds famiduction to Indian sociology. Since Srinivas ideas liar, the book is dedicated to Evans-Pritchard.) But have greatly influenced contemporary studies of participation in modem political and other proIndian society, this elegant restatement of them cesses subsumed under Westernization frees the will also become a major reference for ongoing re- caste system from its traditional, local, and vertical search. matrix, and new opportunities, educational, Based upon the Tagore Lectures of the Associa- economic, and political, brought about an increase in tion for Asian Studies, the book contains five chap- horizontal solidarity (p. 114). New alignments of

Book Reviews
subcastes have come into existence, fusing distinct groups into large caste units and thus reversing a process characteristic of the traditional society by which new castes arose through fission. Some groups with enhanced secular status have Sanskritized their life styles, so that Westernization has occasionally had the effect of spreading and intensifying religious traditionalism. On the other hand, many of the new elites who participate directly in technological, political, economic, and scientific innovations undergo processes of secularization, and in their life styles emulate Western models. T h i s increases the cultural and social distance between the new elite and other groups. For a time, particularly in South India, Brahmin castes dominated the nationalist movement and the avenues to higher status through English education, while other political changes and increasing horizontal solidarity enhanced the power of several large non-Brahmin land owning castes. The Backward Classes Movement mobilized the resentment of these groups toward the Brahmin elite, but they in turn have monopolized avenues to higher status, creating resentment among the Brahmins they discriminate against and among deprived, lower castes. The struggle for power between large, heterogeneous castes, using the institutional forms of the modem state, suggests that changes of a fundamental kind are occurring in the traditional structure of Indian society. I cannot summarize Srinivas argument without mentioning the finesse with which he handles some difficult methodological issues. For example, he recognizes the value of precise analyses, but in discussing the portmanteau concept of Westernization he puts the case succinctly for the utility of analytically loose ideas: When the entities involved, as well as the emergent processes, are extremely complex, it is hardly realistic to expect that a simple, unidimensional, and crystal-clear concept will explain them fully (p. 47). And, whether or not one agrees with his point, one must admire the neatness with which he handles the idea that modernization causes the rationalization of ends by asserting that social goals are in the final analysis the expression of value preferences, and therefore, nonrational. Rationality can only be predicated of the means but not the ends of social action (p. 52). Few anthropologists nowadays take a philosophical position with so little fuss. Finally, Srinivas concludes his book with a short history of how he developed his conception of Indian society. As Berreman recently indicated (AA 68: 346-354), one of the primary ways in which anthropology will become more scientific is by nourishing a critical sociology of anthropological knowledge. Srinivas brief chapter contributes toward that end. I t ends with the observation that social anthropologists studying their own societies should have the ability to see the absurd side of things and to laugh at themselves. Otherwise they will be pompous and

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opinionated, and apt lo regard themselves as infallible (p. 163). This truism caused me to reflect negatively that Srinivas humor is the gentle kind, not the wit of soda1 criticism. The good humor of his perspective is the noblesse oblige of an Establishment intellectual. Comparing his description of India to the way American sociologists have written about their own society, I missed the satirical bite of Veblen, C. Wright M i l l s ,or David Reisman. And, by free association, I wondered what Oscar Lewis would turn up with his tape recorder in a Calcutta bustee. At the opposite pole from Lewis, Srinivas underplays the comedy of human malice and selfdeception. After all, Sanskritization is the conspicuous display of dubious virtues in a long-enduring scramble for advantage. And, vanity of vanities, all the past and present social mobility in Srinivas book is mobility upward. Of life on the skids we hear nothiig.

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The Emergence o j on Industrial Labor Force in India: A Study of the Bombay Cotton Mills, 1854-1947. MORRISDAVID MORRIS. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1965. 263 pp., 7 appendices, bibliography, 2 charts, index, 21 tables. $7.50. Rmewed by I:. G . BAILEY,University of Sussex The past, no doubt, throws some illumination on the present, although for the anthropologist Morriss shadows are significant. The story of the labor force that manned the Bombay cotton mills is splendidly told, not a word wasted and a neatly incisive argument dissecting fixed ideas about unstable and uncommitted labor, about caste prejudices, and above all about the supposed difficulty of recruiting factory labor in an underdeveloped economy. Once in the town the peasant became a townsman, it seems. Not but what there was a bucolic slackness behind the normative facade of strict management: attributable, however, to the cheapness of labor, to management policy, and, until after World War I, to an easy market for cotton goods; not, M o m s asserts, to any peasant values that made him illadapted to factory labor. For the anthropologist many questions remain. For example, in what kind of family, kin, and caste structure did the worker live outside the factory? How did this connect with the workers behavior in the factory? Just what were the noneconomic strands in a jobbers network? We do not know and for this industry and period we never will know. But Mornss book points up many questions to be asked today about industrialization in underdeveloped countries.

The Zande Scheme: An Antltropologual Case Study of Economic Devdopmmt in Africa. CONRAD C.
REINING. (Northwestern University African l l . : Northwestern Studies, No. 17) Evanston, I University Press, 1966. xxi, 255 pp., 3 appendices,