A Study on Bondage

When Jan Breman’s book was first published in 1974, Rural Sociology and Anthropology was going through an in­trospection: community development and Panchayat Raj had failed to bring about the peaceful revolution which would end .­inequality and’ poverty. Nor did the ana­lytical scheme of ‘dominant caste’ and ‘Sanskritization’ help in understanding why the requisite change had not taken place. Sociologists and anthropologists of rural studies had thus begun to examine their own theoretical and methodological assumptions which had failed to grasp the reality in its entirety. The late sixties showed a definite shift in the theoretical perspective in the field of rural studies. Rural studies increasingly adopted a Marxist perspective. The focus shifted from caste studies to the studies of peasant movements, from ‘Sanskritiza­tion’ and ‘westernization’ to studies of class antagonisms and class domination. This led the discipline to widen its para­meters and scope. An appreciable num­ber of sociologists and anthropolo­gists turned to economics, history and politics to find new concepts to tackle the Indian rural scene.