Caste Ideology and Interaction (Cambridge Papers in Social Anthropology (No. 9))

266 Pages·2009·2.93 MB·English

by  Dennis B. McGilvray (editor)

CAMBRIDGE PAPERS IN SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY
General Editor: Jack Goody
No 9 Caste Ideology and Interaction
CAMBRIDGE PAPERS IN SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY
1 The Developmental Cycle in Domestic Groups, edited by Jack Goody
2 Aspects of Caste in South India, Ceylon and North-west Pakistan, edited by
E.R. Leach
3 Marriage in Tribal Societies, edited by Meyer Fortes
4 Succession to High Office, edited by Jack Goody
5 Dialectic in Practical Religion, edited by E.R. Leach
6 Councils in Action, edited by Audrey Richards and Adam Kuper
7 Bridewealth and Dowry, by Jack Goody and S.J. Tambiah
8 Questions and Politeness, edited by Esther N. Goody
Caste Ideology and
Interaction
Edited by Dennis B. McGilvray
University of Colorado, Boulder
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
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Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York
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© Cambridge University Press 1982
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 1982
This digitally printed version 2009
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number: 81-18037
ISBN 978-0-521-24145-8 hardback
ISBN 978-0-521-10500-2 paperback
CONTENTS
Lists of figures, matrices and tables page vi
Contributors to this volume viii
Note on orthography x
Introduction 1
Dennis B. McGilvray
Caste conundrums: Views of caste in a Sinhalese Catholic 8
fishing village
R.L. Stirrat
Mukkuvar vannimai: Tamil caste and matriclan ideology 34
in Batticaloa, Sri Lanka
Dennis B. McGilvray
Caste rank and verbal interaction in western Tamilnadu 98
Stephen C. Levinson
Caste and politics in India since 1947 204
Geoffrey Hawthorn
Notes 221
Bibliography 236
Index 248
FIGURES, MATRICES AND TABLES
FIGURES
Caste conundrums
1 The genealogical background of a dispute over 'true' page 29
Karava identity
2 The spread of inferior lokuru status through marriage 29
3 Reversing the ritualized inferiority of wife-givers 31
Caste rank and verbal interaction
4 Economic dependencies among castes 103
5 T/V universes, the five major types 117
6 Symmetrical REL-exchange 122
7 Scaled usage implications of verbal status markers 127
8 Rank by T-giving 131
9 Rank by V-giving 133
10 Rank by V-receiving 135
11 Rank by T-receiving 137
12 Rank on two dimensions compared 138
13 Giving and receiving compared 139
14 Ranks by thresholds for V-usage 145
15 Summary of derived ranks 146
16 Ranks on a variety of non-linguistic media 155
17 Mini-matrix illustrating hypothetical Varna strategies 166
18 Scores in cooked rice transactions 169
19 Net ranks by V-giving and receiving 182
20 REL to superiors and inferiors 184
21 Symmetrical exchange of REL 186
22 Ranks in linguistic and non-linguistic media 200
VI
Figures
MATRICES
I The initial matrix page 115
II Rank as (most) T-givers 130
III Rank as (least) V-givers 132
IV Rank as (most) V-receivers 134
V Rank as (least) T-receivers 136
VI Thresholds for V-giving 141
VII Scored thresholds for V-giving 144
VIII The basic matrix 147
IX Cooked rice exchange 159
X Varna strategies in cooked rice 168
XI Varna strategies in T/V usage 170
XII Symmetrical and asymmetrical usage of REL 178
XIII REL as T and V substitutes 183
XIV Symmetrical exchange of cooked rice 191
XV Symmetrical exchange in informal seating 192
XVI Symmetrical exchange in the dishonorific, ta 193
XVII Symmetrical exchange in the dishonorific, ppa 194
XVIII T/V usage to and from periya Kavuntar squires 197
TABLES
Mukkuvar vannimai
1 Tamil opinion-ranking of eight castes traditionally 42
associated with the Hindu caste system in Akkaraipattu
2 Opinions regarding the principle governing the spread 57
of death pollution among kinsmen
Caste rank and verbal interaction
3 Inventory of castes by division membership, percentage 102
of local population, traditional occupation, and
native language
4 Linguistic features associated with caste division 108
membership
5 Alternates for second person singular pronoun in Tamil 110
6 Marriott's varna interaction strategies 164
7 Examples of varna strategies in exchange of cooked rice 164
8 Numerical interaction scores of players in Figure 17 166
vn
CONTRIBUTORS TO THIS VOLUME
DENNIS B. McGiLVRAY received a Ph.D. in anthropology from the Uni-
versity of Chicago in 1974. He has taught at the University of Santa Clara
and at Cambridge University, where he was a University Assistant Lecturer
in the Department of Social Anthropology from 1973 to 1978. He later
spent two years at Cornell University as an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral
Fellow before becoming an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the
University of Colorado, Boulder. His publications include papers on ritual,
ethnomedicine, and Eurasian ethnicity in Sri Lanka, and he is preparing a
monograph on social organization in eastern Sri Lanka.
R.L. STIRRAT completed a Ph.D. in social anthropology at Cambridge
University in 1973. He has taught at the University of Aberdeen, and he is
now a Lecturer in the School of African and Asian Studies at the Univer-
sity of Sussex. He has published papers on kinship, demonic possession,
compadrazgo, and the trading networks of fishermen in Sri Lanka.
STEPHEN c. LEVINSON has done sociolinguistic fieldwork in the Kohku
region of western Tamilnadu, South India. He received a Ph.D. in anthro-
pology from the University of California at Berkeley in 1977, and he is
presently a Lecturer in the Department of Linguistics at Cambridge Uni-
versity. During 1980-81 he was a member of the Working Group on
Language and Cultural Context at the Australian National University. He is
the co-author, with Penelope Brown, of a paper on politeness phenomena
in vol. 8 of this series, and he has written a book in the Cambridge Text-
books in Linguistics series, Pragmatics.
GEOFFREY HAWTHORN studied at Oxford and the London School of
Economics and taught at the University of Essex before becoming a
Lecturer in Sociology at Cambridge University. He was a Visiting Professor
at Harvard University in 1973-74 and a Visiting Member at the Institute
for Advanced Study at Princeton in 1979-80. He is the author of The
viii
Contributors
Sociology of Fertility and Enlightenment and Despair: A History of
Sociology, and he is the editor oi Population and Development: High and
Low Fertility in Poor Countries.
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