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Book No. – 20 (Sociology)
Book Name – Indian Sociological Thought (B.K. Nangla)
What’s Inside the Chapter? (After Subscription)
1. Works of Marriott
2. Methodology.
3. Communities and Traditions
4. Village India
5. Little and Great Traditions
6. Parochialization and Universalization
7. Social Stratification
8. Specialized Study of Caste Ranking
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LANGUAGE
Sociological Thoughts of McKim Marriott
Chapter – 10
Table of Contents
- McKim Marriott, PhD in Anthropology (Chicago, 1955), is a Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Chicago.
- He has conducted fieldwork in Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra.
- Marriott edited Village India and authored various studies on rural social organization and change.
- His work focuses on formulating and simulating indigenous sociologies and psychologies in countries like India, Japan, and others.
Works of Marriott
- Village India: Studies in the Little Community (1955)
- Caste Ranking and Community Structure in the Five Regions of India and Pakistan (1960)
- India through Hindu Categories (1990)
Methodology
- Marriott used the structural-functional approach in his study of village India.
- He was influenced by the models of Robert Redfield and Milton Singer and applied this framework to study social change in India.
- The core concepts in this approach are ‘civilization’ and ‘social organization of tradition’.
- The approach is based on an evolutionary view that civilization or the structure of tradition (cultural and social structures) develops in two stages:
- Orthogenetic or indigenous evolution.
- Heterogenetic encounters or contacts with other cultures and civilizations.
Communities and Traditions
- The discussion on the relationship between communities and traditions has a history of developing adequate concepts for studying social phenomena.
- Redfield introduced the concept of ‘folk culture’, drawing from distinctions made by European sociologists such as Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft (Tonnies) and mechanical and organic solidarity (Durkheim).
- In 1955, Redfield formalized his ideas through the concept of ‘little community’, characterized by smallness, distinctiveness, homogeneity, and self-sufficiency.
- Marriott explored the interplay among the communities in rural and urban centres.
- In his essay “Little Communities in an Indigenous Civilization” (1955), Marriott explicitly discusses the relationship between the local caste system and the larger order of state and civilization.