Civilisations, markets and services: Village servants in India from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries

Sumit Guha
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Sumit Guha: Brown University

The Indian Economic & Social History Review, 2004, vol. 41, issue 1, 79-101

Abstract: This article focuses on the history of the set of practices labelled jajmani. These practices have been cited as evidence that a fundamentally inegalitarian spiritual principle could transcend and limit the economic domain. That idea underpins the belief that human beings must be grouped in mutually exclusive 'civilisations'. Projected geo-politically. the 'civilisation' is then endowed by Samuel Huntington with the Hobbesian, self-aggrandising traits of the nation- state. I suggest that we eschew grand unifying principles and try understand the meanings and motives that generate the repetitive patterns of meaningful interaction which we refer to as a 'society', a 'social practice or an 'institution'.

Date: 2004
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:indeco:v:41:y:2004:i:1:p:79-101

DOI: 10.1177/001946460404100105

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