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The Pasts of an Indian Village

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Bernard S. Cohn
Bernard S. Cohn
Affiliation:
University of Rochester
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Extract

Events of the last two hundred years have led many scholars to divide the societies of the world into contrasting pairs, such as developed—under-developed, advanced—backward, traditional—modern. Central to these concepts are not only ideas about the level of technological development, but the very character of the societies and cultures which are compared and contrasted as well. Professor Edward Shils has recently remarked that the traditional society is one in which, among other things, there is a strong attachment to the past, by which behavior is determined and validated. Solutions to problems old and new are determined by the past of the society, and modernization quickens when ties to the past begin to be cut and new criteria for determining and validating behavior are invoked.

Type
Research Article
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 3 , Issue 3 , April 1961 , pp. 241 - 249
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1961

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References

1 Shils' views were presented at a seminar of the Committee on the Comparative Study of New Nations at the University of Chicago. These remarks stimulated me to re-examine some field data that I had collected in a north Indian village in 1952–53, to try to determine what pasts were to be found in this village. My thinking about the problem was furthered by discussions of an earlier draft of the paper with Professors Milton Singer, Sylvia Thrupp, and Eric Wolf.

2 The basic description of the social, religious, and economic structure can be found in: Opler, Morris E. and Singh, Rudra Datt, “The Division of Labor in an Indian Village”, in Carleton Coon, A Reader in General Anthropology (New York, 1948), pp. 464–496;Google Scholar and “Economic, Political and Social Change in a Village of North Central India”, Human Organization, 11 (1952), pp. 5–12CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Opler, Morris, “Factors of Tradition and Change in a Local Election in Rural India”, in Park, Richard L. and Tinker, Irene (eds.), Leadership and Political Institutions in India (Princeton, 1959), pp. 137–150Google Scholar. Singh, Rudra Datt, “The Unity of an Indian Village”, Journal of Asian Studies, 16 (1956), pp. 10–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Cohn, Bernard S., “The Changing Status of a Depressed Caste”, in Marriott, McKim (ed.), Village India (Chicago, 1955), pp. 53–77;Google Scholar“Some Notes on Law and Social Change in North India”, Economic Development and Cultural Change, 9 (1959), pp. 79–93.Google Scholar

3 “The Changing Traditions of a Low Caste”, in Singer, Milton (ed.), Traditional India: Structure and Change (Philadelphia, 1959), pp. 207–215.Google Scholar

4 Details of this contest in Cohn, “The Changing Status of a Depressed Caste”, see n. 2 above.