The idea of social stratification would be introduced, with its key themes of class, caste and gender. Society is not static and social mobility and social change are ongoing processes. Education has played an important role in contributing to, reproducing and also challenging stratification. Social class in its various interpretations ranging from income groups to class as access to means of production has been closely liked to this. The class structure of rural and urban India would be presented along with the role of education in social mobility and the possibility of social change. Power and authority have had an independent contribution to make to social stratification. Educational certification and the meritocracy have played a role in both shaping and challenging inequality. Status groups, caste and community have added further dimensions to inequalities in education. The main features of the Indian caste system and the processes of change in it would be introduced. Gendering as different from sex difference has played a fundamental role in shaping social and educational inequality. Its roots and variations across different kinds of societies would be introduced along with its implications for education. The difference between social mobility and social change would be highlighted.
Core Readings:
"Social Stratification" from Giddens, Anthony. 2009. Sociology. 6th ed. Cambridge: Polity Press. From beginning to page 442.
Chapter One from Wright, Erik Olin. 1996. Class Counts: Comparative Studies in Class Analysis. Page 13 to page 21. From "Class and Exploitation" to the end of "A map of middle-class locations" OR
Breman, Jan. “Agrarian Change and Class Conflict in Gujarat, India.” Population and Development Review 15 (January 1, 1989): 301–23. Please read at least page 304 to 314, from the beginning of "A new landscape" to the end of "The landless existence, past and present".
"Varna and Jati" from Dube, S.C. 1990. Indian society. New Delhi: National Book Trust. In Hindi.
"A history of gender stratification" pp 319-330 in Kerbo, Harold R. 2003. Social Stratification and Inequality: Class Conflict in Historical, Comparative, and Global Perspective. 5th ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill. In Hindi.
Additional Readings: (the pdfs of most are at the bottom of this page)
Ambedkar, B. R. (1936). The Annihilation of Caste. Retrieved June 13, 2013, from http://ccnmtl.columbia.edu/projects/mmt/ambedkar/web/readings/aoc_print_2004.pdf
Beteille, Andre. “Conclusion: Caste, Class and Power.” In Caste, Class, and Power: Changing Patterns of Stratification in a Tanjore Village, 185–225. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1965.
Bhattacharjee, Nandini. 1999. “Throughthe looking glass: gender socialization in primary school.” Pp. 336-355 in Culture, socialisation and human development: theory, research and applications in India, edited by T.S. Saraswathi. New Delhi: Sage Publications.
Blanden, Jo, Paul Gregg, and Stephen Machin. 2005. Intergenerational mobility in Europe and North America. London: Centre for Economic Performance, LSE Retrieved August 24, 2008 (http://cep.lse.ac.uk/about/news/IntergenerationalMobility.pdf).
Chakravarti, Uma. “Gender, Caste and Labour: Ideological and Material Structure of Widowhood.” Economic and Political Weekly 30, no. 36 (September 9, 1995): 2248–56. doi:10.2307/4403192.
Chopra, Radhika. 2005. “Sisters and brothers: Schooling, family and migration.” Pp. 299-315 in Educational regimes in contemporary India, edited by Radhika Chopra and Patricia Jeffery. New Delhi: Sage.
Deshpande, Rajeshwari, and Suhas Palshikar. 2008. “Occupational mobility: How much does caste matter.” Economic & Political Weekly 43(34):61-70.
Deshpande, Satish, and Yogendra Yadav. 2006. “Redesigning affirmative action.” Economic & Political Weekly 41(24):2419-2424.
Dewey, Susan. “Imperial Designs, Post-Colonial Replications: Class and Power at Cathedral and John Connon School in Bombay.” Ethnography and Education 1, no. 2 (2006): 215–229. doi:10.1080/17457820600715554.
Djurfeldt, Goran, A. Rajagopal, N. Jayakumar, R. Vidyasagar, Staffan Lindberg, and Venkatesh Athreya. 2008. “Agrarian Change and Social Mobility in Tamil Nadu.” Economic & Political Weekly 43 (45): 50–61.
Ember, Carol R., Melvin Ember, and Peter N. Peregrine. “Chapter 20: Sex, Gender and Culture.” In Anthropology, 340–357. New Delhi: Pearson, 2007
Gandhi, Raj S. “From Caste to Class in Indian Society.” Humboldt Journal of Social Relations 7, no. 2 (1980): 1–14.
Gupta, Dipankar, ed. Social Stratification. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997.
Haviland, William A., Harald A.L. Prins, Dana Walrath, and Bunny McBride. 2008. “Modes of Subsistence.” In Cultural Anthropology: The Human Challenge, 158–174. 12th ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
Henslin, J.M. (n.d.) "Inequalities of gender". Henslin, J. M. Sociology: A Down-to-Earth Approach. Pearson.
Kumar, Sanjay, Anthony Heath, and Oliver Heath. 2002. “Changing patterns of social mobility: some trends over time.” Economic & Political Weekly 37:4091-4096.
Lenin, V.I. "On the Agrarian Question". Lenin’s Collected Works, 4th English Edition, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965, Volume 31, pages 152-164.
Lukose, Ritty A. “Fashioning Gender and Consumption.” In Liberalization’s Children: Gender, Youth, and Consumer Citizenship in Globalizing India, 54–95. Durham [NC]: Duke University Press, 2009.
Madan, Amman. 2007. “Sociologizing merit.” Economic & Political Weekly 42(29):3044-3050.
Mao Tse-tung. 1933. "How to differentiate the classes in the rural areas". from Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung.
Mukherjee, Ramakrishna. “Caste in Itself, Caste and Class, or Caste in Class.” Economic & Political Weekly 34, no. 27 (1999): 1759–61.
Nieuwenhuys, Olga. “The Paradox of Child Labor and Anthropology.” Annual Review of Anthropology 25 (1996): 237–251.
Singh, Ashish, and Sripad Motiram. “How Close Does the Apple Fall to the Tree?” Economic and Political Weekly 47, no. 40 (September 27, 2012): 56–65.
Unni, Jeemol. 2009. “Gender differentials in education: Exploring the capabilities approach.” Economic & Political Weekly 44(10):111-117.
Velaskar, Padma. 2005. “Educational stratification, dominant ideology and the reproduction of disadvantage in India.” Pp. 196-220 in Understanding Indian Society: The Non-Brahmanic Perspective, edited by S.M. Dahiwale. New Delhi: Rawat.
Walkerdine, Valerie. “Feminity as Performance.” Oxford Review of Education 15, no. 3 (1989): 267–279.
Weber, Max. 1946. "Class, Status and Party" pp 180-195, Weber, Max. 1946. From Max Weber. Essays in Sociology. edited by H.H. Gerth and C.Wright Mills. New York: Oxford University Press.
Weisskopf, Thomas E. 2004. “Impact of reservations on admissions to higher education in India.” Economic & Political Weekly 39(39):4339-4349.
Wu, Kin Bing, Pete Goldschmidt, Christy Kim Boscardin, and Mehtabul Azam. 2007. “Girls in India: Poverty, location and social disparities.” in Exclusion, gender and education: Case studies from the developing world, edited by Maureen Lewis and Marlaine Lockheed. Centre for Global Development Retrieved June 21, 2011 (http://www.cgdev.org/doc/books/lewis-lockheed-eduCaseStudies/lewis-lockheed-chapter5.pdf).