The Poison in the Gift: Ritual, Prestation, and the Dominant Caste in a North Indian Village [Paperback]

The Poison in the Giftis a detailed ethnography of gift-giving in a North Indian village that powerfully demonstrates a new theoretical interpretation of caste. Introducing the concept ofritual centrality, Raheja shows that the position of the dominant landholding caste in the village is grounded in a central-peripheral configuration of castes rather than a hierarchical ordering. She advances a view of caste as semiotically constituted of contextually shifting sets of meanings, rather than one overarching ideological feature. This new understanding undermines the controversial interpretation advanced by Louis Dumont in his 1966 book,Homo Hierarchicus, in which he proposed a disjunction between the ideology of hierarchy based on the purity of the Brahman priest and the temporal power of the dominant caste or the king.

List of Figures
List of Tables
Preface
1. Introduction: Toward a Redefinition of Dominance in North Indian Society
2. Auspiciousness and Inauspiciousness as Cultural Constructs
3. The Structure of Ritual Action
4. The Ritual Contexts ofDanand the Ritual Construction of Gujar Centrality
5. Prestation Types and Terminological Usages: Shifting Configurations of Castes and Kinsmen in Pahansu
6. Conclusions
Notes
References
Index