Jonathan Parry

Death and the regeneration of life

Preface 1. Introduction: death and the regeneration of life Maurice Bloch and Jonathan Parry 2. The dead and the devils among the Bolivian Laymi Olivia Haris 3. Sacrificial death and the necrophagous ascetic Jonathan Parry 4. Witchcraft, greed, cannibalism and death: some related themes from the New Guinea Highlands Andrew Strathern 5. Lugbara death John Middleton 6. Of flesh and bones: the management of death pollution in Cantoese society James L. Watson 7. Social dimensions of death in four African hunting and gathering societies James Woodburn 8. Death, women and power Maurice Bloch Index.

Introduction: money and the morality of exchange

This collection is concerned with the symbolic representation of money in a range of different societies, and more specifically with the moral evaluation of monetary and commercial exchanges. It focuses on the different cultural meanings surrounding monetary transactions, emphasizing the enormous cultural variation in the way money is symbolized and how this symbolism relates to culturally constructed notions of production, consumption, circulation, and exchange.

Introduction: death and the regeneration of life

Introduction This volume focuses on the significance of symbols of fertility and rebirth in funeral rituals, though all the contributors have found it impossible to exclude consideration of many other aspects of the treatment of death which are related to this central theme. While it would take us too far from our central concerns to embark on a systematic historical review of the various ways in which our problem has been approached in the literature of anthropology and related disciplines, a few preliminary remarks may help to place the collection in relation to some of its direct predecessors. The observation that notions of fertility and sexuality often have a considerable prominence in funeral practices excited the attention of anthropologists and their public from the very beginning of the discipline. The Swiss anthropologist Bachofen was one of the first to pay any systematic attention to the topic in his Versuch uber Graber symbolik der Alten which was published in 1859 and parts of which have been translated into English under the title ‘An essay on ancient mortuary symbolism’ (in Myth, religion and mother right , Bachofen, 1967). His study was principally concerned with Greek and Roman symbolism, particularly as manifested in the Dionysian and Orphic mystery cults, and its starting point was the significance of eggs as symbols of fertility and femininity in some Roman tombs and in funerary games. The eggs were painted half-black and half-white, representing the passage of night and day and the rebirth of life after death.

Suicide in a central Indian steel town

Over the past 15 years ‘farmer suicides’ have occasioned grave public concern; and it has recently been claimed that Chhattisgarh has the highest incidence in the country. This article suggests that the representation of such cases as the major public policy problem to do with self-inflicted death is politically inflected and that there are good grounds for supposing that—at least in certain pockets—the urban suicide rate is as high, if not higher. In the industrial area around steel town of Bhilai, this has risen dramatically over the last 20 years and it is the aristocracy of public sector labour that is significantly most susceptible. This is ultimately attributable to the liberalisation of the economy and the consequent downsizing of this workforce, which has led to a crisis in the reproduction of class status. Such workers are privileged; think of themselves as different from the informal sector ‘labour class’ and fear sinking into it. Suicides are significantly under-reported and the official statistics are systematically inflected by fear of the police and the law, which encourage both concealment and the deliberate obfuscation of likely motives, and almost certainly increase the ‘lethal probabilities’ of suicide attempts.

Company and contract labour in a central Indian steel plant

Abstract This paper offers a descriptive analysis of the way in which the working world of contract labourers in a public-sector Indian steel plant is differentiated from that of its regular workforce. The two kinds of workers regard themselves as distinct kinds of people and are now best seen as distinct social classes. While the sociology of India has broadly accepted the manual/non-manual labour distinction as the crucial marker of the boundary between the working and the middle classes, what is suggested here is that that between naukri (secure employment) and kam (insecure wage labour) – which cuts right across that distinction and is broadly congruent with that between formal- and informal-sector employment – is a more important marker of difference. At work, the two kinds of workforce are sharply distinguished by the material rewards of their jobs and by their security and conditions of employment; outside it by differences in life-style and attitudes – a gap that has grown with the liberalization of the Indian economy. The composition of the work groups to which the two kinds of labour characteristically belong are sharply differentiated by gender, by regional ethnicity and by urban or rural residence. Interactions within the work group are again very different, while interactions between regular and contract workers are largely confined to the work itself. Outside it they are kept to a minimum, testifying to a shared sense that socially the two kinds of workforce are profoundly different.

“Sociological Marxism” in central India: Polanyi, Gramsci, and the case of the unions

Karl Polanyis 1944 book, The Great Transformation, offered a radical critique of how the market system has affected society and humanity since the industrial revolution. This volume brings together contributions from distinguished scholars in economic anthropology, sociology and political economy to consider Polanyis theories in the light of circumstances today, when the relationship between market and society has again become a focus of intense political and scientific debate. It demonstrates the relevance of Polanyis ideas to various theoretical traditions in the social sciences and provides new perspectives on topics such as money, risk, work and the family.

Death and cosmogony in Kashi

Kashi (Kagi) is the pious Hindu’s name for Varanasi and is one of the seven sacred cities (puris) of India. This paper arises from fieldwork which focused primarily on the various groups of sacred specialists who earn their living on or around the burning ghdts of the city (see Parry 1980); and represent a preliminary and tentative attempt to describe certain key aspects of its transcendental identity which the specialists promulgate in their dealings with the pilgrims and mourners they serve. My aim is to show how these sacred characteristics can be seen as a logically interconnected set. More specifically, I consider the relationship between the notions that Kashi is both the origin-point and a microcosm of the universe; that it stands outside space and time yet all space is contained within it; and that it provides for the attainment of all the goals of human existence (the purusarthas): in life for the realisation of dharma, artha, and kama andabove allin death for the realisation of moksa or mukti.

Institutions and inequalities: essays in honour of André Béteille

This volume brings together a set of original essays written in tribute to Andre Beteille, whose work as a sociologist and social anthropologist has been marked by a distinctive combination of theoretical innovation and scrupulous scholarship. These essays, likewise, match theory with empirical data, engaging with, extending and occasionally disputing the arguments of Beteilles work. Most of the essays relate to India, but two explore inequalities in China and Russia, and in Japan and England respectively.

David Pocock’s Contributions and the legacy of Leavis

David Pocock (1928–2007) co-founded this journal with Louis Dumont, and it is easy to assume that they were intellectually more ‘like-minded’ than we believe was really the case. In the first part of this appreciation, we offer some biographical and intellectual context for Pocock’s career. In the second, we identify the principal ways in which his sociological project did converge with Dumont’s and the respects in which it seems fundamentally different. Both were deeply influenced by Evans-Pritchard; but much of their difference is explained, we suggest, by Pocock’s prior loyalty to the teachings of the literary critic, F.R. Leavis. For good or ill, Pocock’s more reflexive preoccupations and his concern with the moral complexity of social life chime better with, and indeed anticipate, subsequent theoretical trends in the discipline.

Sex, bricks and mortar: constructing class in a central Indian steel town

Based on a case study of informal sector construction labour in the central Indian steel town of Bhilai, this paper explores the intersection and the mutually constitutive relationship between social class on the one hand, and gender (and more specifically sexual) relations on the other. It is part of an attempt to document and analyse a process of class differentiation within the manual labour force between aspirant middle class organized sector workers and the unorganized sector ‘labour class’. With some help from the (pre-capitalist) ‘culture’ of their commonly work-shy men-folk, their class situation forces ‘labour class’ women onto construction sites where they are vulnerable to the sexual predation of supervisors, contractors and owners. That some acquiesce reinforces the widespread belief that ‘labour class’ women are sexually available, which in turn provides ‘proof’ to the labour aristocracy that they themselves are a different and better breed, superior in culture and morals. Class inequalities produce a particular configuration of gender relations; gender relations (and in particular sexual relations) produce a powerful ideological justification for class differentiation. This proposition has strong resonances with processes reported from other parts of the world; but in the Indian context and in its specific focus on sex it has not been clearly articulated and its significance for class formation has not been adequately appreciated.