 Cultures of Caste and Rural Development in the Social Network of a South Indian VillageSaurabh Arora and Bulat Sanditov SAGE Open, 2015, vol. 5, issue 3, 2158244015598813 Abstract: Cultures of caste in much of rural India have become entangled with institutions of rural development. In community-driven development, emphasis on “local resource persons†and “community spokespersons†has created new opportunities for brokerage and patronage within some villages, which interact with existing forms of authority and community afforded by caste identity and intra-caste headmanship. In this article, we study how these entangled cultures of caste and development translate into social network structures using data on friendship ties from a south Indian village. We find that although caste continues to be important in shaping community structures and leadership in the village’s network, its influence varies across different communities. This fluidity of caste’s influence on community network structures is argued to be the result of multiple distinct yet partially overlapping cultural-political forces, which include sharedness afforded by caste identity and new forms of difference and inequality effected through rural development. Keywords: culture; network structure; homophily; rural development; community development; patronage; development brokerage; India (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:sagope:v:5:y:2015:i:3:p:2158244015598813 Access Statistics for this article More articles in SAGE Open |
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