The Poison in the Gift (Paperback)

The Poison in the Gift is a detailed ethnography of gift-giving in a North Indian village that powerfully demonstrates a new theoretical interpretation of caste. Introducing the concept of ritual centrality, Raheja shows that the position of the dominant landholding caste in the village is grounded in a central-peripheral configuration of castes rather than a hierarchical ordering. She advances a view of caste as semiotically constituted of contextually shifting sets of meanings, rather than one overarching ideological feature. This new understanding undermines the controversial interpretation advanced by Louis Dumont in his 1966 book, Homo Hierarchicus, in which he proposed a disjunction between the ideology of hierarchy based on the purity of the Brahman priest and the temporal power of the dominant caste or the king.

General

Imprint:	University of Chicago Press
Country of origin:	United States
Release date:	September 1988
First published:	September 1988
Authors:	Gloria Goodwin Raheja
Dimensions:	228 x 154 x 18mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Paperback
Pages:	300
ISBN-13:	978-0-226-70729-7
Categories:	Books > Reference & Interdisciplinary > Interdisciplinary studies > Cultural studies > General Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Anthropology > General Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social groups & communities > Rural communities Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social institutions > Customs & folklore > Customs
LSN:	0-226-70729-6
Barcode:	9780226707297

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