Avatars of Indian Research
- 1 January 1970
- journal article
- tradition and-change
- Published by Cambridge University Press (CUP) in Comparative Studies in Society and History
- Vol. 12 (1) , 59-72
- https://doi.org/10.1017/s0010417500005624
Abstract
Like differing versions of Vishnu, the same difficult problems continuallyreappear in the scholarly literature on India. The nature of caste, itsresiliency or dissolution in the face of modernization; the quality oftraditional Indian civilization, its adaptation or collapse in response toeconomic development and industrialization, are two questions whichcontinue to haunt the specialist on South Asia. What hangs in the balance is not only our understanding of social change or non-change in industrializing societies, but the validity of anthropology and the other social sciences as adequate methods of description and analysis in the contemporary world. If the ‘ethnographic present’ always remains only the past, then is not the value of anthropology and social science immeasurably diminished?Keywords
This publication has 1 reference indexed in Scilit:
- Resiliency and Change in the Indian Caste System: The Umar of U.P.Journal of Asian Studies, 1967