The Politics of Lineage

Caste, Kinship and Land Control in an Agrarian Frontier

Bibliographic Data

ID2634879
AuthorsGirija Joshi (0000-0002-1220-9181, Leiden University, corresponding author)
Year2019
Volume21
Publication date2019-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSouth Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1960-6060 • E-ISSN: 1960-6060
PublisherOpenEdition (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.4000/samaj.5638
OpenAlexW2973074164
LanguageEN
References cited20

This paper traces the shifting loci of community in rural Haryana ('the Delhi frontier') in the early nineteenth century, focusing particularly upon caste and kinship. It suggests that categories later identified by bureaucrats and scholars as 'caste' and 'tribe' in this region were in fact simply broad ethnic labels that represented only very abstract communities. It will further demonstrate that in this mobile agrarian frontier, kinship categories (such as the clan) had historically crystallized around the control of land. By implication, kinship was a vehicle of resource consolidation, whose boundaries were determined at least in part by this pragmatic consideration. An appreciation of the political dimension of kinship brings complexity to our understanding of rural politics, highlighting that the 'village community' was far from being a historically stable polity

Agrarian society · Agriculture · Archaeology · Caste · Clan · Ethnic group · Frontier · Genealogy · Geography · Kinship · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Polity · Sociology · Tribe · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · Gender Studies · History · Law · South Asian Studies and Conflicts · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies

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