Milton Singer

Cultural Values in India's Economic Development:

not exactly like ours, will ensure all the people personal freedom. But if an accompanying material prosperity is also to be achieved-and the government will not be successful unless it can demonstrate certain progress on the material sideconsiderable education and re-education of the people will be necessary. For a belief in the virtue of renunciation is not an incentive to hard work for material gain; but only hard work by all the people is going to bring any real betterment of their living conditions. Somehow a spiritual incentive, a substitute for renunciation, will have to be found. Somehow they must be made to realize the living and exciting possibilities of the freedom and democracy their new government offers them. Our material wealth has come to us al-

The Cultural Pattern of Indian Civilization: A Preliminary Report of a Methodological Field Study

During a visit with my wife to India in 1954–1955 I had an opportunity to do a methodological field study in South India. The purpose of this study was to chart an intellectual map of some of the researchable territory that lies between the culture of a village or small community and the culture of a total civilization. This study is not easy to classify in terms of prevailing conceptions about “research,” since it is something that falls between the intensive anthropological field study and the purely conceptual types of methodological analysis. But despite its unorthodox character, it seemed an appropriate type of study to undertake in a new and not well known field. Although the study was primarily designed to serve the methodological purpose of giving an empirical content to some very general ideas and to suggest concrete hypotheses for further research, it also turned up some substantive findings which have importance on their own account. In this report I shall mention some of these in passing but will in the main confine myself to the problems of method posed by the study. A more detailed and documented account of the entire study is in preparation.

Beyond Tradition and Modernity in Madras

The study of the modernization of non-Western cultures has been dominated by the metaphor of the ‘take-off’ introduced by the economists and by the assumption of incompatibility between ‘modern’ and ‘traditional’ cultures. These interpretations of modernization are shared by both those who view it as a process of diffusing Western culture and by those who view it as an internal process of development which may require an external stimulus to ‘trigger’ the ‘take-off’. On either view, modernization becomes a problem of suddenly transforming a ‘traditional’ type of culture, society, and personality into a ‘modern’ type . This view of modernization is supported, and perhaps suggested, by the classical nineteenth-and early twentieth-century social science theory of ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ societies as opposed types, a theory associated with the names of Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Maine, and Tonnies, among others.

India's Cultural Values and Economic Development: A Discussion

In a recent article, 1 Professor Milton Singer advanced an interesting interpretation of traditional Indian cultural values and their power to supply a positive ethic for the new India. Concern with this topic arises naturally enough, not only from the great need of improving the standard of living in India, but also from the importance of the successful accomplishment of the reforms now under way. Is there a tradition of values to which these reforms can appeal for strength to carry them through? Or, on the contrary, are there values in the Indian conception of life which are likely to hinder or even defeat such efforts ? Both Asians and Westerners alike have recognized that the answers to these questions are important in estimating the future of the modernization of India.

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.

The semiotics of play: A bridge between nature and culture?

Thomas A. Sebeok. The Play of Musement. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1981. 312 pp. Illustrations and 3 Appendices.

Personal and Social Identity in Dialogue

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On the Nature of Caste in India A Review Symposium on Louis Dumont's Homo Hierarchicus : 9 Modernization or Traditionalization?

About two years ago at a birthday party for an eight-year-old boy named Simon, I was surprised to hear him sing, as the birthday cake was brought in, first with the rest of the company “Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, dear Simon. Happy birthday, to you.” and then by himself “Happy birthday to me. Happy birthday to me. Happy birthday, dear Simon. Happy birthday to me.” The party was a small family affair; besides Simon’s mother and grandmother, an aunt and uncle, several older cousins, my wife, and I joined in what has become an annual affair.

UNESCO. Interrelations of Cultures: Their Contribution to International Un derstanding. Collection of Intercultural Studies. Pp. 387. Paris: United Na tions Educational, Scientific and Cul tural Organization, 1953.

accordingly? (3) Is the socio-economic system able to fulfil his new expectations ? Dumont shows that the impurity of the Untouchable is conceptually inseparable from the purity of the Brahmin so that untouchability will not truly disappear until the purity of the Brahmin is itself radically devalued. Generalizing from this statement about the two extreme groups on the hierarchical system as a whole, it is clear that further development along the official lines is both a question of raising expectations of the traditionally low and the ability to make the traditionally high status-groups accept relative deprivation. Having read Dumont’s careful analysis I am especially pessimistic with regard to the second condition.

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cannot obviously be made responsible for all crimes and misdeeds of those two regimes, one is impressed by the fact that Nazi and fascist ideologies perceived a deep spiritual and intellectual kinship in Plato rather than in, say, John Locke or Thomas Jefferson. The author concludes as follows: &dquo;The essentials of Plato’s vision still stand: the prophetic image of a social brotherhood, growing up in grace and harmony and understanding, under justice, toward an ideal perfection never quite to be reached.&dquo; Even those who find this position unacceptable will gain immensely from In Defense of Plato. WILLIAM EBENSTEIN