Caste Ideology and Interaction

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Cover ; Title; Copyright; Contents; Lists of figures, matrices and tables ; Contributors to this volume ; Note on orthography ; Introduction ; Caste conundrums: Views of caste in a Sinhalese Catholic fishing village ; 1. INTRODUCTION; 1.1. Aims; 1.2. The background; 1.3. Concepts of caste; 2. CONCEPTIONS OF CASTE; 2.1. Purity, pollution, etcetera. 2.2. The organizational principles of caste2.3. Caste and biology; 2.4. Caste as 'social descent'; 2.5. Caste as occupation; 2.6. Caste as the past; 2.7. Inequality and overlapping; 2.8. Caste and Catholicism; 3. CONTEXTS OF CASTE REALITY; 3.1. Questions and gossip; 3.2. Caste and marriage; 4. CONCLUSION; Mukkuvar vannimai: Tamil caste and matriclan ideology in Batticaloa, Sri Lanka ; 1. INTRODUCTION; 2. AN OVERVIEW OF CURRENT THEORY; 2.1. Dumont and the 'substance and code' approach. 2.2. Yalman's Kandyan studies3. AN ETHNOGRAPHIC SKETCH OF BATTICALOA; 3.1. Castes and communities; 3.2. Matrilineal organization; 3.3. Ambiguities of caste and matriclan; 4. BELIEFS ABOUT PURITY AND BODILY SUBSTANCE; 4.1. Blood, sex and reproduction; 4.2. States of purity and pollution; 4.3. General implications; 5. MUKKUVAR VANNIMAI; 5.1. Mukkuvars; 5.2. Velajars; 5.3. Viracaiva Kurukkals; 5.4. The Mukkuvar-Velalar relationship; 5.5. The matrilineal rule; 5.6. Matrilineal rights, shares and honours; 5.7. Matrilineal caste affiliation vs. bilateral status; 5.8. Patterns of local variation. 5.9. Mukkuvar dominance: the Kokkatticcolai temple5.10. Velalar dominance: Tambiluvil and Tirukkovil; 5.11. Mukkuvar-Velalar alliance: Akkaraipattu town; 5.12. The Mukkuvar cultural paradigm; 6. CONCLUSION; 6.1. A critique of purity and bio-moral substance theories; 6.2. The social and historical context of caste ideologies; Caste rank and verbal interaction in western Tamilnadu ; 1. INTRODUCTION; 1.1. Ethnographic background; 1.2. The language situation in the village; 1.3. Caste categories and verbal interaction. 2. LINGUISTIC INFERENCE OF INTER-CASTE RANK RELATIONS2.1. Advantages of this method; 2.2. Initial matrix: informal observations; 2.3. The valuation of media and moves within them; 2.4. Scaling as a members' activity; 2.5. Two media and four scales; 2.6. T/V behaviour: passive Scoreboard or competitive game?; 2.7. Consensus on hierarchy; 2.8. Dissensus in ranking; 3. INFERENCE OF ALLIANCE RELATIONS; 3.1. REL: patterns of exchange and blocs of allies; 3.2. Symmetrical exchange in other media; 4. POWER AND CLASS; 5. SOME CONCLUSIONS