David G. Mandelbaum

Alcohol and Culture

There are a great many substances that men have learned to ingest in order to get special bodily sensations. Of them all, alcohol is culturally the most important by far. It was anciently the most widespread in use, the most widely valued as a ritual and societal artifact, the most deeply embedded in diverse cultures. Tribal peoples of all the major parts of the world (save Oceania and most of North America) knew alcoholic drink; it was of considerable interest in the principal civilisations, in most of them from their early beginnings onward. In some languages, as in English, the very term ‘drink’ takes on the connotation of drinking alcoholic liquids.

The Study of Life History: Gandhi

The study of lives as wholes has not yet been well developed in the social sciences, though a good many anthropologists, psychologists, political scientists, and sociologists have written about its importance. These authors agree that a main shortcoming in such study is the lack of suitable concepts to make up a coherent frame of reference. Three procedural suggestions, the ideas of adaptation, dimension, and turning, may be useful for the beginnings of such a frame. These suggestions are intended as guidelines for the collection and analysis of data. Their applicability is illustrated in the life history of Gandhi, a man whose life is worth studying for a number of reasons.

Why Some of the Poor Get Richer: Economic Change and Mobility in Rural Western India [and Comments]

To the extent that peasants, particularly Indian peasants, are ever considered to be economically mobile, they are generally seen from one of two perspectives: either the Malthusian perspective, which predicts that most landholdings will shrink over time, due to partitioning among multiple heirs; or the Marxian perspective, which predicts that a few landholdings will increase in size at the expense of the vast majority-the latter diminishing, in many cases, to nothing at all. These two perspectives can be used to generate a number of specific hypotheses concerning changes in the distribution of land in rural India. Naturally, some of the Malthusian hypotheses contradict Marxian ones, but there are others which are mutually congruent (the poor will generally get poorer, from either perspective, though the rich also get richer, according to the latter). In this paper, historical and contemporary data collected from a highly commercialized and densely populated village in western India are used to test a number of these hypotheses. Where the Malthusian and Marxian hypotheses are congruent, they sometimes appear to fit the data. However, most of these data are better explained by exogenous factors, such as migration, than by the hypotheses which they appear superficially to confirm. In addition, where the Malthusian and Marxian hypotheses contradict each other, the former show a better fit with the data. The reason is simply that the largest landholdings did not get larger, they got smaller. Moreover, while many of the smaller holdings also diminished, some got larger. The concentration of landholdings has not increased, contrary to the Marxian hypotheses. Most interestingly, neither set of hypotheses can explain the significant amount of upward mobility which has ocurred among smallholders, and even among those who were landless. Coupled with frequent downward mobility among landholders of all sizes, this means an unexpectedly low correlation between the size of a familys holding in 1920 and its size in 1970. The distribution of land is neither rigidly fixed by a static social system nor deteriorating according to a pattern predicted by the Malthusian or Marxian perspectives. Since the village in question has undergone intensive commercialization, this implies that commercialization as such is not necessarily a cause of increased poverty and inequality.

The Family in India

NDIA is so vast and her people seem so variegated that any generalized statement of the family in India must be subject to numerous exceptions in detail and amendments in local particular. Nevertheless, it is possible to depict Indian family organization in general terms that will have some applicability to a very large proportion of the Indian population, a population that constitutes one fifth of mankind. The classic form of the family in India is that of the joint family. It is prescribed in certain of the sacred Hindu books and has prevailed in the land for centuries. The joint family structure described here is today more characteristic of rural than of urban families, of the upper caste and wealthier strata of society than of the lower and poorer strata, of the more orthodox sectors than of those which have taken over Western traits, and of Hindu than of Muslim communities. But even among urban and Westernized and Muslim families, the patterns of interpersonal relationships set by the joint family are not wholly ignored, and the model of the orthodox, scriptural joint family still has influence everywhere in India. Families of the classic type consist of a number of married couples and their children who live together in the same household. All the men are related by blood, as a man and his sons and grandsons, or a set of brothers, their sons and grandsons. The women of the household are their wives, unmarried daugh. ters, and perhaps the widow of a deceased kinsman. At marriage a girl leaves her ancestral family and becomes a part of the joint family of her husband. The size of such families varies considerably, and the modern trend everywhere is for smaller households. But there are even now households in which four generations are to be found living under one roof, and the family group may number into the hundreds. Each married couple generally has its own bedroom, and sometimes another room for its own children, but there is a common kitchen in which food is prepared for the whole household. The life of the family goes on mainly in one or two large rooms-privacy in the Western sense is minimal.

The Study of Complex Civilizations

which have bulked large in time and space, and which have had many interlocking parts. The civilizations of China, of Japan, of India, of the Arab world, of Western Europe, come to mind as examples of such complex civilizations; each of them has a number of variant forms according to coun? try or region or period. In recent years there has been a notable growth in the study by anthropologists of peoples within the orbit of one or another of these civilizations. There has also been

Village India: Studies in the Little Community.

By reading, you can know the knowledge and things more, not only about what you get from people to people. Book will be more trusted. As this village india studies in the little community, it will really give you the good idea to be successful. It is not only for you to be success in certain life you can be successful in everything. The success can be started by knowing the basic knowledge and do actions.

Myths and Myth Maker: Some Anthropological Appraisals of the Mythological Studies of Levi-Strauss

Among the most renowned of contemporary studies of myth are the works of Claude Levi-Strauss. A prolific author, vastly erudite and industrious, he is one of the most discussed thinkers of his time in literary, linguistic, anthropological, philosophic, and even some political circles (cf. Lapointe and Lapointe 1977, Holbeck 1978). The centerpiece of his considerable oeuvre is the four-volume series under the general title Mythologiques, Introduction to a Science of Mythology (English translations, 1969, 1973, 1978, 1981). The greater part ofthe discussion of these writings has been critical or expository, not much of it has been propulsive (cf. Carroll 1978^475-477). One reason for this circumstance in respect to folklore studies is that the work of Levi-Strauss does not deal with folklore as communication in the way this research field has (in recent decades) come to be widely understood. His myth analyses are predominantly of texts from American Indian tribes, with only occasional examination of narratives and practices from peoples of contemporary civilization. Levi-Strauss has explained (i976a[i96o]:26-28), elliptically, that modern cultures and societies are too close to a contemporary observer to be studied with suitable objectivity, a position not now generally accepted by most social-cultural anthropologists. But even in his approach to tribal myths, Levi-Strausss procedure appears as a sharp reverse march from present trends in anthropology and folklore studies, back to concentration on text, away from observed social context, back to mining of nuggets of information in a manner reminiscent of Frazer. At the same time, the purpose of the analyses aims far beyond the usual goals of folklore study, arching in a grand jete towards revaluation of the elementary structure of mind, to discover the primary processes of thought. Those who try to explain Levi-Strausss works usually warn that it is virtually impossible to translate the delicate texture of the prose or to do justice, in brief space, to the fine-spun quality of the thought. The present discussion is based on the English translations of the relevant works. Nonetheless, with due regard for the properly posted perils of capsule condensation, we may ask what potential there is in this method for developing understanding of issues that are of current interest to cultural-social anthropol? ogists and folklorists.

The todas in time perspective

W. H. R. Rivers. The Todas. London and New York: Macmillan, 1906. xviii + 755 pp. Preface, appendices, glossary, genealogical tables, photographs and index. Reprint edition: New York, Humanities Press, 1967.

Anthropology for the nuclear age

Humanity now faces a crucial turning point in the nuclear age, and, the author says, anthropology can help in understanding the institutional and cultural changes that the transition will require.

The village called Rampura: remembrance, annotations, comparisons

Certain field experiences remain vivid in one’s memory. I had such an experience on the first day of January in 1959 when M.N. Srinivas took me on a visit to Rampura. I had read his papers about that village and I had heard more about its people from him. Meeting them was a memorable encounter for me in several ways. I could take in the actual milieu, the village ground, its fields, and its people. It was the busy season of harvest and of cane crushing so I could observe and ask questions about these operations. Even more stimulating was to talk in person with some of the men and women whom I already knew from Srinivas’s accounts. So I could round out my impressions of them. Thus Kulle Gowda, for