scholarly journals Variation in Caste Homophily Across Villages and Contexts in Rural India

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Davidson

This paper studies on caste homophily across seventy-five villages in rural Karnataka, India. Caste is conceptualized as a system of ethnic categories that map onto positions within the social structure of each village. Despite being a salient category across India, the caste structure is not uniform across villages, caste groups or network contexts. Using social network and demographic data collected by Banerjee et al. (2013) I investigate how caste homophily varies within villages across social contexts and between villages. Overall I find strong evidence of caste homophily across the majority of contexts; people tend to exchange resources and socialize with other people occupying a similar position in the caste order. However this varies across villages, relations, and groups. It appears to be strongest among higher caste groups, although it weakens with regards to the lending and borrowing of money, a vertical relationship between high and low castes. The lending of rice and kerosene and social relationships involving advice giving and important decisions are also particularly homophilous for both groups. This demonstrates how the strength of ethnic boundaries can vary based on the relational and spatial context.

2019 ◽  
Vol 48 (5) ◽  
pp. 527-536
Author(s):  
Ulrica Paulsson Do ◽  
Birgitta Edlund ◽  
Christina Stenhammar ◽  
Ragnar Westerling

Aims: Health-related behaviours are associated with social relationships. Adolescence is a time when healthy and unhealthy behaviours are established. There is a need to investigate adolescents’ views on how social relationships are related to health-related behaviours of adolescents in the Scandinavian welfare system. This study aimed to explore Swedish adolescents’ experiences and thoughts of how social relationships in different social environments are related to health-related behaviours. Methods: A total of 36 adolescents aged 15–16 years were interviewed in seven focus-group sessions. Qualitative content analysis was used for analysis of the transcribed interviews. Results: Two themes – social context and personal management – emerged. Swedish adolescents describe that their health-related behaviours as being partly shaped by their own personal management but mainly by the social contexts that surround them. Social contexts were expressed as playing a role in the adolescents’ health-related behaviours, as they provide fellowship, pressure, dependability and engagement. Fellowship with friends and family was expressed as providing healthy behaviours and high levels of well-being. Fellowship with friends was particularly important for physical activity. Close relationships were stated to influence health-related behaviours. Pressure from friends, teachers and social media were described as mainly influencing unhealthy behaviours and, to some extent, low levels of well-being. However, adolescents’ personal ability illustrated how adolescents shaped their own health-related behaviours. Conclusions: The study results contribute to the understanding of Swedish adolescents’ views on how social relationships can shape their health-related behaviours. The findings may be useful to school professionals in supporting adolescents to improve well-being and healthy behaviours.


2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-110
Author(s):  
G. C. Pal

Abstract   Caste, a social institution in India, has significant implications on social legislations, affirmative action and group-specific development policies. In the modern society, the traditional caste structure however continues to nurture the unequal social interaction process among caste groups. This often translates into various forms of human rights violations against the groups at the bottom of caste hierarchy. The key concern is that resistance to such violations often leads to ‘caste violence’ of different forms. Although a body of literature that explains this caste phenomenon in the discourse of human rights and social justice, its larger consequences remains a neglected dimension. This paper, drawing evidence from a series of empirical research on ‘mapping caste-based violence’ in contemporary Indian society, sheds light on diverse consequences of real or perceived violence, emanating from ‘caste’. The analysis reveals that consequences of caste violence are manifested in social, economic, psychological and moral terms. The ‘victims of violence’ speak the language of suffering and deprivation in different spheres of life, having a bearing on the basic human needs of ‘belongingness’ democratic honour and ‘sense of security’. The apathetic attitude and slow response of state machinery towards caste violence often accentuate the social conditions to make the ‘victims of violence’ and their communities fall into the vicious cycle of caste oppressions and increased vulnerability to poor human development.


2014 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 31-50
Author(s):  
Youba Raj Luintel

Until very recently, Jumla’s Pawai, or the Matawali Chhetri, have remained one of the very least understood caste groups in Nepal. In many sense Pawai can be considered as an unusual caste group and possess some unique yet paradoxical socio-cultural traits and claims. Overall, they represent Chhetri sub-caste, but in the Jumli caste hierarchy they are placed lower than Chhetri. They do not wear sacred thread called “janai,” do mostly worship masto, and in Bota village, some of them even offer liquor to their Hindu diety. This article attempts to explain the distinctive characteristics of Pawai in light of the Jumli caste hierarchy, and differs from some of the simplistic explanations of human ecological approach to argue that Pawai are simply the by-product of their cultural interface with the local ecology, or the reductionist arguments of identity politics that it is the ethnicity and not the class that differentiates society and forms different identity of the culturally marginalised one. This article first sheds lights on the social construction of Pawai as the kamsel caste group, takes into account the uniqueness of paddy cultivation in Jumla and its caste implications in the local political economy, and then compares and contracts the Pawai vis-a-vis the Jyulel to make an argument that the uniqueness of Pawai can only be meaningfully understood by placing them in their dynamic relationship with Jyulel. This relationship essentially entails a relationship of privilege and deprivation in terms of access to and ownership of jyula (as productive low lands). By implication, it is differential access to assets and resources that brings diversity and inequality in society and not the vice-versa. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3126/dsaj.v7i0.10436 Dhaulagiri Journal of Sociology and Anthropology Vol. 7, 2013; 31-50


1986 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 236-251 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martha A. Myers ◽  
Susette M. Talarico

1978 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 380-382
Author(s):  
M. Javed Akbar Zaki

To many social theoreticians, the population explosion, particularly in the developing nations presents a crippling threat to their developmental pro¬cesses. Their argument's validity rests mainly on the assumption that expected economic progress is swallowed up by unbalanced rise of numbers in the population. The book being reviewed deals mainly with this subject matter and is divided into two parts, each containing three articles contributed by various researchers. Part one, 'The Social context of Fertility Decision' is focused on analyzing the role of factors affecting fertility at the micro-level decision making process. The first article 'Fertility decision in rural India' by Vinod Jainath, examines the applicability to rural India of various models of the process of fertility decision making and finds most of these wanting with respect to the Indian social situation. While analyzing the fertility patterns of Rural India, he points out the positive need for larger families among the poor small farmers mainly due to labour supply considerations. The author argues that unemployment and under¬employment actually motivate the poor to have more children as it better ensures their economic security in their old age. As the chances of gaining employ¬ment for their offspring diminish, they are induced to increase the total number of children in order that atleast one will be able to support them. Thus a vicious circle of poverty arises in large families because of each of the parents wanting to increase their children's chances of employment by ultimately reducing the overall employment opportunities even further and exacerbating their poverty.


Author(s):  
Dennis Eversberg

Based on analyses of a 2016 German survey, this article contributes to debates on ‘societal nature relations’ by investigating the systematic differences between socially specific types of social relations with nature in a flexible capitalist society. It presents a typology of ten different ‘syndromes’ of attitudes toward social and environmental issues, which are then grouped to distinguish between four ideal types of social relationships with nature: dominance, conscious mutual dependency, alienation and contradiction. These are located in Pierre Bourdieu’s (1984) social space to illustrate how social relationships with nature correspond to people’s positions within the totality of social relations. Understanding how people’s perceptions of and actions pertaining to nature are shaped by their positions in these intersecting relations of domination – both within social space and between society and nature – is an important precondition for developing transformative strategies that will be capable of gaining majority support in flexible capitalist societies.


Author(s):  
Catrin Heite ◽  
Veronika Magyar-Haas

Analogously to the works in the field of new social studies of childhood, this contribution deals with the concept of childhood as a social construction, in which children are considered as social actors in their own living environment, engaged in interpretive reproduction of the social. In this perspective the concept of agency is strongly stressed, and the vulnerability of children is not sufficiently taken into account. But in combining vulnerability and agency lies the possibility to consider the perspective of the subjects in the context of their social, political and cultural embeddedness. In this paper we show that what children say, what is important to them in general and for their well-being, is shaped by the care experiences within the family and by their social contexts. The argumentation for the intertwining of vulnerability and agency is exemplified by the expressions of an interviewed girl about her birth and by reference to philosophical concepts about birth and natality.


Edupedia ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-66
Author(s):  
Khulusinniyah ◽  
Farhatin Masruroh

The social-emotionaldevelopment of children is important to be developed from an early age. The emotionaldevelopment in early childhood, takes place simultaneously with their social development. Even there is claim that their emotional development is influenced by their social development. Itcaused by the emotional reactions displayed by early childhood as a response to the social relationships that they live with other people. The emotional development of early childhood can also affect the sustainability of social relationships. Stimulation is an important thing to give by early childhood educators and parents so they can optimize their social emotion development. With this treatment, they can grow into the life ready person in facing the complex future.


2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (Especial) ◽  
pp. 105
Author(s):  
Dante Choque-Caseres

In Latin America, based on the recognition of Indigenous Peoples, the identification of gaps or disparities between the Indigenous and non-Indigenous population has emerged as a new research interest. To this end, capturing Indigenous identity is key to conducting certain analyses. However, the social contexts where the identity of Indigenous persons are (re)produced has been significantly altered. These changes are generated by the assimilation or integration of Indigenous communities into dominant national cultures. Within this context, limitations emerge in the use of this category, since Indigenous identity has a political and legal component related to the needs of the government. Therefore, critical thought on the use of Indigenous identity is necessary in an epistemological and methodological approach to research. This article argues that research about Indigenous Peoples should evaluate how Indigenous identity is included, for it is socially co-produced through the interaction of the State and its institutions. Thus, it would not necessarily constitute an explicative variable. By analyzing the discourse about Aymara Indigenous communities that has emerged in the northern border of Chile, this paper seeks to expose the logic used to define identity. Therefore, I conclude that the process of self-identification arises in supposed Indigenous people, built and/or reinforced by institutions, which should be reviewed from a decolonizing perspective and included in comparative research.


Author(s):  
Martin Krzywdzinski

This chapter examines the organizational socialization mechanisms in automotive plants in Russia and China. The empirical analysis starts with selection processes. How do the companies select candidates during recruitment and whom do they select? Are they looking for a certain type of employee? The chapter continues with the analysis of onboarding concepts in China and Russia and then follows the employees within their teams. It analyzes the social relationships in the team, which influence the socialization processes within the company. Finally, overarching company activities intended to promote social integration (team building, competitions) are examined to determine the extent to which they shape work behaviors and generate identification with the company. The analysis shows considerable differences between the Russian and the Chinese plants regarding the intensity and the effects of organizational socialization.


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