Harald Tambs-Lyche | University of Picardie: Jules Verne (original) (raw)
Papers by Harald Tambs-Lyche
HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), Oct 1, 2021
Table of contents
Social Anthropology, Jan 19, 2007
These approaches, we feel, may not really be contradictory: the real challenge lies in defining m... more These approaches, we feel, may not really be contradictory: the real challenge lies in defining more precisely the relationship between the repetitive chart of ritual and its innovative and strategic use. Yet the relation cannot be reduced to script and performance, nor to text and inscription (Howe 2000), since form and content continuously interact in a dialectical manner. A coherent theory of symbolic action, then, should identify the rules that at once structure the ritual and guide its transformation into event. As Keesing notes (1993: 99), Jakobsonian phonemics provides 'a very distorted paradigm of la pensée humaine'. The problem lies in its reification of dyadic oppositions, its opposition of structure to code, of paradigmatic to syntagmatic elements. Our analysis instead bases itself on a holistic approach to semantics, implying a focus on the place of every statement in a wider web of meaning (Quine 1953; Lawson and McCauley 1990: 144). 1 What we propose is that the core of ritual lies in its syntax, which is necessarily influenced by the message as well as the code, by the encoding rather than the language. Ritual as form, then, cannot be detached from what ritual action is supposed to do, since the rules that guide form refer to whatever makes the ritual work or prevents it from working. This implies that the criteria for inclusion or exclusion of ritual elements lie in their articulation, through ritual practice, with other elements, rather than their fitting into a pre-established grid. Yet in order to work, the rituals we describe here must fit the idea that participants-which include the 'spectators'-have of the ritual called nema, which we describe below. Rather than a fixed set of elements and sequences, we prefer to see individual nemas as members of a set having a strong family ressemblance (Wittgenstein 1953; Lakoff 1987: 12), 2 so that between any two 1 The crucial point for our purposes is that the meaning of statements are primarily functions of their positions in the web and, secondarily, of their relationships to those statements with which they have the most 'direct connections' (Lawson and McCauley 1990: 144). 2 Lakoff defines family ressemblance as 'The idea that members of a category may be related to another without all members having any properties in common that define the category' (1987: 12). He notes that Rosch based her research on prototypes explicitly on Wittgenstein's ideas.
Journal des anthropologues, Dec 1, 2009
Ces dernières années, l'anthropologie de l'État a évolué vers des perspectives nouvelles impliqua... more Ces dernières années, l'anthropologie de l'État a évolué vers des perspectives nouvelles impliquant une critique des conceptions traditionnelles de l'État. Cette critique ne reprend pas la position de Radcliffe-Brown qui, on se souvient, caractérisait l'État comme « une illusion » (1940 : XXIII). Les études récentes concernant l'anthropologie de l'État n'acceptent pas non plus les approches communes à la philosophie et aux sciences politiques, où l'État figure comme un objet sui generis, avec toute la réification qu'implique l'identification d'une « institution ». Au lieu de poser comme objets l'appareil et l'idéologie étatiques, les recherches anthropologiques visent aujourd'hui à identifier « les processus étatiques », et l'enquête de terrain a souvent conduit les chercheurs à étudier ces processus tels qu'ils se donnent à voir au niveau local, où la population appréhende l'État à travers une série de restrictions et d'opportunités (Krohn-Hansen & Nustad, 2005 : 14). Ces enquêtes montrent que le domaine de l'État englobe des formes et des processus d'organisation très variés, tels les lois, les écoles, les routes, la fiscalité, qui renvoient à des processus étatiques dont les acteurs poursuivent des intérêts souvent contradictoires. Il s'agit ensuite d'analyser les images de l'État qui s'expriment dans les représentations et dans des registres de discours différents (
The Scandinavian Santal Mission met with astonishing success in converting the Santals from 1873 ... more The Scandinavian Santal Mission met with astonishing success in converting the Santals from 1873 into the mid-eighties. There were then very few missionaries, converted Santals did a great deal of the work, and the strategy was that 'the Santals should be converted by the Santals'. But later, contradictions and doubts appeared with the missionaries: the converted Santals were vary vague in their theological position and the missionaries were faced with greater exigency from their Scandinavian supporters. Gradually, and especially by the late nineties, the Santals, 'unable to plan for tomorrow' were seen as a difficult flock which needed discipline and strong leadership from the missionaries
Parcours anthropologiques, 2018
Archives Des Sciences Sociales Des Religions, 2009
On the Karnataka coast, new mediums are emerging who found shrines dedicated to one of the many f... more On the Karnataka coast, new mediums are emerging who found shrines dedicated to one of the many forms of the Hindu Goddess. These mediums are possessed or experiencing miracles, leading them to assert a new form of communication with supernatural phenomena which is conveyed through anomalous signs interpreted as manifestations of the Goddess. These signs which relate to the body, to dreams, or more globally to the social field confirm the calling of the mediums who often decide to worship one of the fierce forms of the Goddess. The analysis focuses on the way in which mediums answer the call of the Goddess by staging a ritual technique to establish a dialogue between the Goddess and her worshippers. The emergence of new mediums appears as a form of breaking away from the orthodox mode of worship in the main temples where the oracles are controlled by high caste priests. The new mediums are inspired by the mediumship of the bhuta cult from which they also distance themselves by offering to their devotees new social forms of charisma.
Norsk antropologisk tidsskrift, 2009
Journal of Sindh Studies , 2023
The argument of this paper is simple. We find, in a number of legends, a certain Hamir Sumra, the... more The argument of this paper is simple. We find, in a number of legends, a certain Hamir Sumra, the ruler of Sindh, cast in the role of the 'bad king' whose lust for women constitutes a threat to the moral order. The question I want to answer is this: are we dealing with a menace from outside, from a foreign land? Or is Hamir Sumra part of the community whose morals he threatens to destroy? I argue that he is judged as if he was part of the same moral community as his critics, yet he is placed on the other side of the Rann or the Thar desert, as if to create convenient distance. What this implies, from a regional perspective, is that Sindh is seen as a country distinct from Gujarat and Rajasthan, but not radically different from them. In other words, the three countries are considered as part of a single culturally and
Les Mondes du Travail, no. 27, 2021
Dans cet article j'ai essayé de décrire les effets sur le monde du travail des développements act... more Dans cet article j'ai essayé de décrire les effets sur le monde du travail des développements actuels de la politique indienne
In these reminiscences from the Bangladesh Sundarbans in the early 1980s, I recall the climate of... more In these reminiscences from the Bangladesh Sundarbans in the early 1980s, I recall the climate of fear that reigned in the area. Among the poor, every spring presented the threat of starvation and death, as their rice stocks became depleted and the price of rice became impossibly high. Rice became scarce, too, since much was smuggled to India at an even "better" price. For those who had a little land, there was the danger that rich neighbours would dispossess them by bribing the village accountant to change the title to the land. For the land-grabbers, there was the fear of vengeance from the Mukti Bahini, the clandestine freedom fighters from the time of the war of independence, who would sometimes kill the wrongdoers. For those who sympathised with the Mukti Bahini, there was the fear of the police. Even the schoolmasters were afraid, for the state coffers would run dry in the summer, and they would not get paid until the arrival of foreign aid money in January. And yet,...
Current …, 1976
Page 1. CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY Vol. 17, No. 1, March 1976 ? 1976 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for ... more Page 1. CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY Vol. 17, No. 1, March 1976 ? 1976 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research Environmental Orientations: A Multidimensional Approach to Social Ecology' by Erik Cohen ...
Le Monde du Travail No. 4 (Décembre), 2021
Dans cet article j'essaye de montrer les liens entre la tradition conservatrice hindou et son ava... more Dans cet article j'essaye de montrer les liens entre la tradition conservatrice hindou et son avatar actuel le Hindutva, les interets du capitalisme indien et le liberalisme, et le développement du ùo,de du travail en Inde. L'argument implique aussi un lien entre le politique liberaliste et l'aggravation des conflits intercommunautaires.
Ces dernières années, l'anthropologie de l'État a évolué vers des perspectives nouvelles impliqua... more Ces dernières années, l'anthropologie de l'État a évolué vers des perspectives nouvelles impliquant une critique des conceptions traditionnelles de l'État. Cette critique ne reprend pas la position de Radcliffe-Brown qui, on se souvient, caractérisait l'État comme « une illusion » (1940 : XXIII). Les études récentes concernant l'anthropologie de l'État n'acceptent pas non plus les approches communes à la philosophie et aux sciences politiques, où l'État figure comme un objet sui generis, avec toute la réification qu'implique l'identification d'une « institution ». Au lieu de poser comme objets l'appareil et l'idéologie étatiques, les recherches anthropologiques visent aujourd'hui à identifier « les processus étatiques », et l'enquête de terrain a souvent conduit les chercheurs à étudier ces processus tels qu'ils se donnent à voir au niveau local, où la population appréhende l'État à travers une série de restrictions et d'opportunités (Krohn-Hansen & Nustad, 2005 : 14). Ces enquêtes montrent que le domaine de l'État englobe des formes et des processus d'organisation très variés, tels les lois, les écoles, les routes, la fiscalité, qui renvoient à des processus étatiques dont les acteurs poursuivent des intérêts souvent contradictoires. Il s'agit ensuite d'analyser les images de l'État qui s'expriment dans les représentations et dans des registres de discours différents (
Purusartha no. 37, 2020
Les débats concernant la royauté Jain ignore généralement les petits état Jaïn de Sud Kanara. Non... more Les débats concernant la royauté Jain ignore généralement les petits état Jaïn de Sud Kanara. Non seulement l'existence de ces petites domaines est attesté depuis le moyen âge, mais plusieurs scions de ces familles, qui se sont faire enthrônes récemment, demeure des personnalités importants dans cette région, malgré le fait que les britanniques n'avait pas reconnu ces chefferies comme étant de "états princiers". Cette article résume les resultats des recherches menées par Marine Carrin et moi depuis 1990.
Academia Letters, 2021
The theoretical debate on caste among social scientists has receded into the background in recent... more The theoretical debate on caste among social scientists has receded into the background in recent years. This is unfortunate, as scholars tend to return to older works to understand the issue, and these works do not really reflect the knowledge we have at present. I wrote a book on the subject recently (Transaction and Hierarchy, Elements for a Theory of Caste-Manohar, Delhi, 2017) and I feel it may be useful to summarize some of my findings here. In this short article, I simply state my views-references can be found in the book mentioned.. But first, let me stress that caste is in no sense disappearing: indeed, the present wave of neo-liberal policies in India, with privatisation of enterprises and education, has strengthened the importance of caste ties, as selection to posts and educational institutions is less based on merit through examinations, and increasingly on social contact as also on corruption. There is a tendency to assume that caste is as old as Indian civilization itself, but this assumption does not fit our historical knowledge. To be precise, however, we must distinguish between social stratification in general and caste as a specific form. There was considerable class difference in the Indus civilization, and there is no doubt that the urban developments of the early part of the last millennium before the Common Era were stratified societies. At the time of Buddha and Mahavir-the middle of that millennium-we can distinguish both social classes and ethnic groups: there is no doubt that ethnic and social stratification was present. But we look in vain for the term jati, which only comes to designate a caste by the time of the Guptas, at the beginning of the Common Era. It is true that the Varnas-the four-category classification of Indin society-is older than this: Brahmins are clearly distinguishable as a group in later Vedic times (ca. 1000 B.C.E.) and the Kshatriya category becomes important between that time and the time of the Buddha. But the two last categories-Vaishya and Shudra-were not constellated into groups even then.
Brill's Encuclopedia of the Religions of the Indigenous Peoples of South Asia, 2020
I try here to give an overall view of the situation of the tribes of Western India, particularly ... more I try here to give an overall view of the situation of the tribes of Western India, particularly in regard to religion. I stress the continuity between tribal religion and popular Hinduism in the region, but also point to various specific traits of the tribal religions. The present pressure from Hindu orgaizations is stressed, but in a erspective of continuous contact over the centuries.
Journal of adivasi and Indigenous Studies X,1: 2020
I argue that, rather than representing the hegemonic worldview in colonial times, the Scandinavia... more I argue that, rather than representing the hegemonic worldview in colonial times, the Scandinavian Santal Mission in its early phase was based on counter-hegemonic and egalitarian ideas. Its main ideologist, Lars Olaf Skrefsrud, came from Norway, which was engaged in its own struggle for independence. I try to show that the countryside he came from was hardly more 'advanced' than the Santal country, thus negating the 'evoltionary gap' often thought to exist between missionaries and their converts - with one important exception: the Norwegian peasantry was already literate. I argue that the Mission's early success was partly due to an egalitarian ideology which resembled that of the santals themselves, and that the failure of the Mission to continue its success in the 1890s was due to a new, authoritarian strain. The Santals, eatrly on, felt they could use the mission for their own purposes: later, their goals and that of the Mission diverged.
HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), Oct 1, 2021
Table of contents
Social Anthropology, Jan 19, 2007
These approaches, we feel, may not really be contradictory: the real challenge lies in defining m... more These approaches, we feel, may not really be contradictory: the real challenge lies in defining more precisely the relationship between the repetitive chart of ritual and its innovative and strategic use. Yet the relation cannot be reduced to script and performance, nor to text and inscription (Howe 2000), since form and content continuously interact in a dialectical manner. A coherent theory of symbolic action, then, should identify the rules that at once structure the ritual and guide its transformation into event. As Keesing notes (1993: 99), Jakobsonian phonemics provides 'a very distorted paradigm of la pensée humaine'. The problem lies in its reification of dyadic oppositions, its opposition of structure to code, of paradigmatic to syntagmatic elements. Our analysis instead bases itself on a holistic approach to semantics, implying a focus on the place of every statement in a wider web of meaning (Quine 1953; Lawson and McCauley 1990: 144). 1 What we propose is that the core of ritual lies in its syntax, which is necessarily influenced by the message as well as the code, by the encoding rather than the language. Ritual as form, then, cannot be detached from what ritual action is supposed to do, since the rules that guide form refer to whatever makes the ritual work or prevents it from working. This implies that the criteria for inclusion or exclusion of ritual elements lie in their articulation, through ritual practice, with other elements, rather than their fitting into a pre-established grid. Yet in order to work, the rituals we describe here must fit the idea that participants-which include the 'spectators'-have of the ritual called nema, which we describe below. Rather than a fixed set of elements and sequences, we prefer to see individual nemas as members of a set having a strong family ressemblance (Wittgenstein 1953; Lakoff 1987: 12), 2 so that between any two 1 The crucial point for our purposes is that the meaning of statements are primarily functions of their positions in the web and, secondarily, of their relationships to those statements with which they have the most 'direct connections' (Lawson and McCauley 1990: 144). 2 Lakoff defines family ressemblance as 'The idea that members of a category may be related to another without all members having any properties in common that define the category' (1987: 12). He notes that Rosch based her research on prototypes explicitly on Wittgenstein's ideas.
Journal des anthropologues, Dec 1, 2009
Ces dernières années, l'anthropologie de l'État a évolué vers des perspectives nouvelles impliqua... more Ces dernières années, l'anthropologie de l'État a évolué vers des perspectives nouvelles impliquant une critique des conceptions traditionnelles de l'État. Cette critique ne reprend pas la position de Radcliffe-Brown qui, on se souvient, caractérisait l'État comme « une illusion » (1940 : XXIII). Les études récentes concernant l'anthropologie de l'État n'acceptent pas non plus les approches communes à la philosophie et aux sciences politiques, où l'État figure comme un objet sui generis, avec toute la réification qu'implique l'identification d'une « institution ». Au lieu de poser comme objets l'appareil et l'idéologie étatiques, les recherches anthropologiques visent aujourd'hui à identifier « les processus étatiques », et l'enquête de terrain a souvent conduit les chercheurs à étudier ces processus tels qu'ils se donnent à voir au niveau local, où la population appréhende l'État à travers une série de restrictions et d'opportunités (Krohn-Hansen & Nustad, 2005 : 14). Ces enquêtes montrent que le domaine de l'État englobe des formes et des processus d'organisation très variés, tels les lois, les écoles, les routes, la fiscalité, qui renvoient à des processus étatiques dont les acteurs poursuivent des intérêts souvent contradictoires. Il s'agit ensuite d'analyser les images de l'État qui s'expriment dans les représentations et dans des registres de discours différents (
The Scandinavian Santal Mission met with astonishing success in converting the Santals from 1873 ... more The Scandinavian Santal Mission met with astonishing success in converting the Santals from 1873 into the mid-eighties. There were then very few missionaries, converted Santals did a great deal of the work, and the strategy was that 'the Santals should be converted by the Santals'. But later, contradictions and doubts appeared with the missionaries: the converted Santals were vary vague in their theological position and the missionaries were faced with greater exigency from their Scandinavian supporters. Gradually, and especially by the late nineties, the Santals, 'unable to plan for tomorrow' were seen as a difficult flock which needed discipline and strong leadership from the missionaries
Parcours anthropologiques, 2018
Archives Des Sciences Sociales Des Religions, 2009
On the Karnataka coast, new mediums are emerging who found shrines dedicated to one of the many f... more On the Karnataka coast, new mediums are emerging who found shrines dedicated to one of the many forms of the Hindu Goddess. These mediums are possessed or experiencing miracles, leading them to assert a new form of communication with supernatural phenomena which is conveyed through anomalous signs interpreted as manifestations of the Goddess. These signs which relate to the body, to dreams, or more globally to the social field confirm the calling of the mediums who often decide to worship one of the fierce forms of the Goddess. The analysis focuses on the way in which mediums answer the call of the Goddess by staging a ritual technique to establish a dialogue between the Goddess and her worshippers. The emergence of new mediums appears as a form of breaking away from the orthodox mode of worship in the main temples where the oracles are controlled by high caste priests. The new mediums are inspired by the mediumship of the bhuta cult from which they also distance themselves by offering to their devotees new social forms of charisma.
Norsk antropologisk tidsskrift, 2009
Journal of Sindh Studies , 2023
The argument of this paper is simple. We find, in a number of legends, a certain Hamir Sumra, the... more The argument of this paper is simple. We find, in a number of legends, a certain Hamir Sumra, the ruler of Sindh, cast in the role of the 'bad king' whose lust for women constitutes a threat to the moral order. The question I want to answer is this: are we dealing with a menace from outside, from a foreign land? Or is Hamir Sumra part of the community whose morals he threatens to destroy? I argue that he is judged as if he was part of the same moral community as his critics, yet he is placed on the other side of the Rann or the Thar desert, as if to create convenient distance. What this implies, from a regional perspective, is that Sindh is seen as a country distinct from Gujarat and Rajasthan, but not radically different from them. In other words, the three countries are considered as part of a single culturally and
Les Mondes du Travail, no. 27, 2021
Dans cet article j'ai essayé de décrire les effets sur le monde du travail des développements act... more Dans cet article j'ai essayé de décrire les effets sur le monde du travail des développements actuels de la politique indienne
In these reminiscences from the Bangladesh Sundarbans in the early 1980s, I recall the climate of... more In these reminiscences from the Bangladesh Sundarbans in the early 1980s, I recall the climate of fear that reigned in the area. Among the poor, every spring presented the threat of starvation and death, as their rice stocks became depleted and the price of rice became impossibly high. Rice became scarce, too, since much was smuggled to India at an even "better" price. For those who had a little land, there was the danger that rich neighbours would dispossess them by bribing the village accountant to change the title to the land. For the land-grabbers, there was the fear of vengeance from the Mukti Bahini, the clandestine freedom fighters from the time of the war of independence, who would sometimes kill the wrongdoers. For those who sympathised with the Mukti Bahini, there was the fear of the police. Even the schoolmasters were afraid, for the state coffers would run dry in the summer, and they would not get paid until the arrival of foreign aid money in January. And yet,...
Current …, 1976
Page 1. CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY Vol. 17, No. 1, March 1976 ? 1976 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for ... more Page 1. CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY Vol. 17, No. 1, March 1976 ? 1976 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research Environmental Orientations: A Multidimensional Approach to Social Ecology' by Erik Cohen ...
Le Monde du Travail No. 4 (Décembre), 2021
Dans cet article j'essaye de montrer les liens entre la tradition conservatrice hindou et son ava... more Dans cet article j'essaye de montrer les liens entre la tradition conservatrice hindou et son avatar actuel le Hindutva, les interets du capitalisme indien et le liberalisme, et le développement du ùo,de du travail en Inde. L'argument implique aussi un lien entre le politique liberaliste et l'aggravation des conflits intercommunautaires.
Ces dernières années, l'anthropologie de l'État a évolué vers des perspectives nouvelles impliqua... more Ces dernières années, l'anthropologie de l'État a évolué vers des perspectives nouvelles impliquant une critique des conceptions traditionnelles de l'État. Cette critique ne reprend pas la position de Radcliffe-Brown qui, on se souvient, caractérisait l'État comme « une illusion » (1940 : XXIII). Les études récentes concernant l'anthropologie de l'État n'acceptent pas non plus les approches communes à la philosophie et aux sciences politiques, où l'État figure comme un objet sui generis, avec toute la réification qu'implique l'identification d'une « institution ». Au lieu de poser comme objets l'appareil et l'idéologie étatiques, les recherches anthropologiques visent aujourd'hui à identifier « les processus étatiques », et l'enquête de terrain a souvent conduit les chercheurs à étudier ces processus tels qu'ils se donnent à voir au niveau local, où la population appréhende l'État à travers une série de restrictions et d'opportunités (Krohn-Hansen & Nustad, 2005 : 14). Ces enquêtes montrent que le domaine de l'État englobe des formes et des processus d'organisation très variés, tels les lois, les écoles, les routes, la fiscalité, qui renvoient à des processus étatiques dont les acteurs poursuivent des intérêts souvent contradictoires. Il s'agit ensuite d'analyser les images de l'État qui s'expriment dans les représentations et dans des registres de discours différents (
Purusartha no. 37, 2020
Les débats concernant la royauté Jain ignore généralement les petits état Jaïn de Sud Kanara. Non... more Les débats concernant la royauté Jain ignore généralement les petits état Jaïn de Sud Kanara. Non seulement l'existence de ces petites domaines est attesté depuis le moyen âge, mais plusieurs scions de ces familles, qui se sont faire enthrônes récemment, demeure des personnalités importants dans cette région, malgré le fait que les britanniques n'avait pas reconnu ces chefferies comme étant de "états princiers". Cette article résume les resultats des recherches menées par Marine Carrin et moi depuis 1990.
Academia Letters, 2021
The theoretical debate on caste among social scientists has receded into the background in recent... more The theoretical debate on caste among social scientists has receded into the background in recent years. This is unfortunate, as scholars tend to return to older works to understand the issue, and these works do not really reflect the knowledge we have at present. I wrote a book on the subject recently (Transaction and Hierarchy, Elements for a Theory of Caste-Manohar, Delhi, 2017) and I feel it may be useful to summarize some of my findings here. In this short article, I simply state my views-references can be found in the book mentioned.. But first, let me stress that caste is in no sense disappearing: indeed, the present wave of neo-liberal policies in India, with privatisation of enterprises and education, has strengthened the importance of caste ties, as selection to posts and educational institutions is less based on merit through examinations, and increasingly on social contact as also on corruption. There is a tendency to assume that caste is as old as Indian civilization itself, but this assumption does not fit our historical knowledge. To be precise, however, we must distinguish between social stratification in general and caste as a specific form. There was considerable class difference in the Indus civilization, and there is no doubt that the urban developments of the early part of the last millennium before the Common Era were stratified societies. At the time of Buddha and Mahavir-the middle of that millennium-we can distinguish both social classes and ethnic groups: there is no doubt that ethnic and social stratification was present. But we look in vain for the term jati, which only comes to designate a caste by the time of the Guptas, at the beginning of the Common Era. It is true that the Varnas-the four-category classification of Indin society-is older than this: Brahmins are clearly distinguishable as a group in later Vedic times (ca. 1000 B.C.E.) and the Kshatriya category becomes important between that time and the time of the Buddha. But the two last categories-Vaishya and Shudra-were not constellated into groups even then.
Brill's Encuclopedia of the Religions of the Indigenous Peoples of South Asia, 2020
I try here to give an overall view of the situation of the tribes of Western India, particularly ... more I try here to give an overall view of the situation of the tribes of Western India, particularly in regard to religion. I stress the continuity between tribal religion and popular Hinduism in the region, but also point to various specific traits of the tribal religions. The present pressure from Hindu orgaizations is stressed, but in a erspective of continuous contact over the centuries.
Journal of adivasi and Indigenous Studies X,1: 2020
I argue that, rather than representing the hegemonic worldview in colonial times, the Scandinavia... more I argue that, rather than representing the hegemonic worldview in colonial times, the Scandinavian Santal Mission in its early phase was based on counter-hegemonic and egalitarian ideas. Its main ideologist, Lars Olaf Skrefsrud, came from Norway, which was engaged in its own struggle for independence. I try to show that the countryside he came from was hardly more 'advanced' than the Santal country, thus negating the 'evoltionary gap' often thought to exist between missionaries and their converts - with one important exception: the Norwegian peasantry was already literate. I argue that the Mission's early success was partly due to an egalitarian ideology which resembled that of the santals themselves, and that the failure of the Mission to continue its success in the 1890s was due to a new, authoritarian strain. The Santals, eatrly on, felt they could use the mission for their own purposes: later, their goals and that of the Mission diverged.
Written like a piece of local history, this book tells the story of Udupi and other places in Sou... more Written like a piece of local history, this book tells the story of Udupi and other places in South Kanara (Coastal Karnataka) from the perspective of these 'Business Brahmins'.It also presents an analysis of kinship, religion and community in a Brahmin merchant caste which, in some ways, do not correspond to received ideas of Brhmin orthodoxy.
Caste cannot be seen as a single structure, in static and synchronic terms, for actors are differ... more Caste cannot be seen as a single structure, in static and synchronic terms, for actors are differently situated and relate to different perceptions of society and its past. By analysing interaction in various settings, the author shows how the encounters of daily life are embedded in a rank consciousness peculiar to India;
The opposition between the violent and the non-violent, between the warrior and merchant traditio... more The opposition between the violent and the non-violent, between the warrior and merchant traditions, is the main theme of this book. The fall of the Vallabhi kingdom in the eighth century opened tha way for a new order, and the author traces the gradual growth of what, by the sixteenth century, had become trditional Rajput polity.From the on, the growth of cities and the increasing importance of the merchant castes led the way towards modernity.
It is in the periphery that confrontations between development projects, conservation efforts, an... more It is in the periphery that confrontations between development projects, conservation efforts, and loval populations are most marked. The contributors deal w ith various peripheries, faced with the intrusion by more powerful groups, as well as with environmental crisis. But the responses are various, as the authors of this volume shows.
This book partakes of the post-colonial reassessment of the nineteenth century, where agency is s... more This book partakes of the post-colonial reassessment of the nineteenth century, where agency is seen to lie, not just with the colonizing centre, but also with the colonized periphery. Here, missionaries from a peripheral part of Europe - including a Norway striving to decolonize itself - try to convert the Santals, an Indian tribe which had rebelled against the intruding colonial order.
This book partakes of the post-colonial reassessment of the nineteenth century. Here, missionarie... more This book partakes of the post-colonial reassessment of the nineteenth century. Here, missionaries from a peripheral part of Europe - including a Norway striving to decolonialize itself - try to convert the Santals, an Indian tribe which had rebelled against the intruding colonial order.
In this paper I discuss an aspect of plural society: the importance of a 'foreign' bourgeoisie. T... more In this paper I discuss an aspect of plural society: the importance of a 'foreign' bourgeoisie. The main point is that in the present example, South Kanara in southwestern India, the 'foreignness' of the bourgeoisie attracts ralatively little animosity due to the extreme pluralism of local society.
Unpublished paper, 2021
Tönnies' concept of Gemeinschaft was not simply one of the polar oppositions defining traditional... more Tönnies' concept of Gemeinschaft was not simply one of the polar oppositions defining traditional vs. modern society. He saw the quest for community (Gemeinschaft) as a fundamental trait of the human species, which could not disappear as long as humans were humans. Does this view have any relevance to the persistence of community documented by the tradition of community studies? And could it have a relevance today?
For a felicitation volume for Marika Vicziany, 2020
I try here, from current knowledge; to trace the history and development of the caste 'system' in... more I try here, from current knowledge; to trace the history and development of the caste 'system' in India.
Working Paper, Mimeo, Univ. of Bergen, 1976
This is a very old paper, but the interest shown in the paper 'Identity as Objective' incited me... more This is a very old paper, but the interest shown in the paper 'Identity as Objective' incited me to put this paper, too, on the site.
The paper discusses the questions of what ethnic stereotypes are about, as well as the question of what they are for ; intention and use of stereotypes are then placed in the context of the models of action based on strategic choice and transaction as developed by Fredrik Barth, generating stuations of avoidance, competion or complementarity.
Unpublished, 1986
This is an old unpublished paper, but somebody recently asked to see it, so I did a cleaned-up ve... more This is an old unpublished paper, but somebody recently asked to see it, so I did a cleaned-up version.
The paper starts with the paradox that anthropologists have been trying to deconstruct ethnicity, while ethnic activists are busy constructing and even reifying the ethnic 'object'. This implies that for them, ethnicity is also an 'objective' or a goal. The paper tries to explore these double meanings while also asking the epistemological question of how we can come to know the 'object' as well as the 'objective' of ethnicity.