STRUCTURAL FUNCTIONAL APPROACH

STRUCTURAL FUNTIONAL APPROACH : PROF M.N. SRINIVAS
  • A school of thought according to which each of the institutions, relationships, roles and norms that together constitute a society serve a purpose and each is indispensable for the continued existence of the others and of society as a whole. 
  • Society is seen as an integrated organic entity. Everything within the system is necessarily functional for the whole. 
  • It is brought into sociology by borrowing concepts from biological sciences. In biology structure: organism meaning a relatively stable arrangement of relationship between different cells
  • Function: consequences of the activity of various organs in the life process of organism.
  •  Evans Pritchard described social structure in terms of persistent social groups and Radcliffe Brown indicates that social structure is based on relation of person to person.
  • stresses the elelment of harmony and consistency not conflicts and contradictions.
  • society is relativley persisting configuration of elements and consensus among different parts of social system. It treats changes as a slow cumulative process of adjustment to a new situation.

Professor M. N. Srinivas

(16th November 1916- 30th November 1999)


The late Prof. M.N. Srinivas, a famous social anthropologist and sociologist who received the Padma Bhushan award, encouraged a whole generation of social scientists to switch from the Book View of Societies to its Field View.
M.N Srinivas was born on  November 16, 1916, in a conventional Brahmin household in Mysore. His father was a government employee. In 1936, Srinivas earned a degree in social philosophy from Mysore University. Later, he enrolled at Bombay University to get his master's degree in sociology under the guidance of renowned sociologist G S Ghurye, who was then the department's head. In 1940 and 1945, respectively, Srinivas earned his LLB and Ph.D. from Bombay University. He moved to Oxford in 1945, where in 1947 he earned his DPhil in social anthropology.

Srinivas completed a small fieldwork for his dissertation on Marriage and Family in the Kannada caste in Mysore, which was supervised by Prof G.S. Ghurye. This book was later published as Marriage and Family in Mysore, which was well-received.  In 1940, he received a grant to research the South Indian Coorgs. In 1944, Srinivas turned in a two-volume, 900-page dissertation titled The Coorgs: A Socio-Ethnic Study. Raymond Firth, a famous anthropologist who served as the external reviewer for this extensive paper, praised it for its rich material and precise citations. In 1945, after receiving his PhD, Srinivas traveled to Oxford to begin his D. Phil under the guidance of renowned social anthropologist A. R. Radcliffe Brown.

Srinivas joined Baroda University in 1951 and established the department of sociology there. He afterwards moved to the Delhi School of Economics at Delhi University eight years later, in 1959. He famously advocated on the Field view of society as opposed to the Book view. He asserts that we may learn about religion, caste, varna, family, and the geographical framework of a society from the textual perspective of the sacred writings. However, fieldwork and small regional empirical studies are utmost important to learn about different regions of a society, particularly Indian society.

Between 1966 to 1969, Prof. Srinivas served as the Indian Sociological Society's president. He played a key role in restructuring the Sociological Bulletin. The Rivers Memorial Medal (1955), the S C Roy Memorial Medal (1958), and the Honorary Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Society of Great Britain and Ireland (since 1964) are only a few of the honors he has won. In acknowledgment of his outstanding accomplishments, he also earned the Dadabhai Naoroji Memorial Prize for social sciences other than economics in 1971 and the Padma Bhushan, the third-highest honor bestowed by the Government of India, in 1977.

Srinivas claimed that the village still had the traditional elements of Indian culture and saw it as a microcosm of Indian society and civilisation. He explains how the decision to choose the village was taken primarily on sentimental grounds in chapter one of The Remembered Village, "How it all began" (Srinivas, 1988:6). The book provides a thorough overview of the south Karnataka village of Rampura, addressing a number of topics including village life, social structure, economy, culture, and social development. It also covers his fieldwork experience.

Books and other publications by Prof M N Srinivas

Books

·         Marriage and Family in Mysore, New Book Company (1942)

·         Religion and Society among the Coorgs of South India, Oxford Clarendon Press (1952)

·         India’s Villages, Asia Publishing House (1955)

·         Caste in Modern India and Other Essays, Asia Publishing House (1962)

·         India: Social Structure (1969)

·         The Remembered Village, Oxford University Press (1976)

·         The Dominant Caste and Other Essays (1987)

·         Social Change in Modern India, University of California Press (1966)


m   DOMINANT CASTE


According to Srinivas, the 'field perspective' led to the concept of the ruling caste in The Remembered village. The 'field view' in studies of Indian society has gained more respect because to this study. The Remembered village (1976) is an outstanding work of M.N. Srinivas which explained the Rampura village in Mysore. He identified caste in village community. Caste is an Indian phenomena and it provides guidelines for behaviour and living. 

Dominant caste is another term referred in his study of Remembered Village. He defined dominant caste on the basis of six attributes that are 

1    Sizable amount of arable land

2    Numeric strength

3   High place in socio-cultural hierarchy

4    Western education

5   Jobs in administration

6    Urban sources of income

Of the above mentioned attributes the above three are most important in determining dominant status of a caste  (1)Numeric strength (2) economic power through ownership of land (3) political power. Accordingly a dominant caste is any caste which has all the three mentioned attributes in a village and hence the ritual ranking of a caste no longer remains the major basis of its position in the social hierarchy. M.N. Srinivas studied Rampura village in Mysore where peasants were dominant caste even though they had low ranking in ritual hierarchy. The numeric strength was high, owned land and had political influence on the village affairs.


 Srinivas claims that a caste is 'dominant' if it outnumbers the other castes numerically, has greater political and economic authority, and owns more land. Four things affect which caste is the dominant one:

1 Its numeric strength,

2 Its control over resources like land,

3 Its access to political influence,

4 Its socio-religious status.

In addition to this, western education, administrative work, and urban income sources all play a considerable role in the status and authority of a certain caste group in the village. When Srinivas initially introduced the idea of the dominant caste, Political scientists, journalists, and politicians have all used the dominant caste notion that Srinivas first introduced  and defined widely. This includes anthropologists, sociologists, and political scientists.

SANSKRITIZATION

Prof. M.N. Srinivas used the word sanskritization in his book Religion and Society Among the Coorgs of India. This book is a study of the Coorgs, a caste-like group of people in India who live in the Coorg region on the south west coast. The Coorgs are divided into two groups, one of which is "highly Brahmanized in customs and rituals." According to Srinivas, these Coorgs represent a tendency that has always existed in the caste framework. A small group of individuals expatriate from the larger whole of which they are a part. Sanskritize their customs and rituals, and they may hope to elevate their status than their parent body in a few decades.

Sanskritization is defined by Srinivas as follows “ The caste system is far from a rigid system in which the position of each component caste is fixed for all time. Movement has always been possible and especially so in the middle regions of hierarchy. A low caste was able, in a generation or two to rise to higer positon in the hierarchy by adopting vegetarianism and teetotalism ami by sanskritizing its ritual ami pantheon. In short it look over as far as possible the customs, rites and beliefs of the Brahmins and the adoption fo the Brahmanic way of life by a low caste seems to have been frequent through theoretically forbidden. This process has been called Sanskritization in this book.” (Religion and Society Among the Coorgs of India)

Sanskritization must be associated with Sanskrit, the classical and sacred language of Hindus.

M.N Srinivas coined the word "Brahmanization" since the lower castes follow the Brahmans, but subsequently discovered that the lower castes also follow other castes like as Kshatriyas, Vaishyas, and so on. Srinivas dropped the use of term because of the following reasons: 

1. Brahmanization is a subset of the larger sanskritization process.

2. Another reason is that the term Brahmanization connotes Vedic traditions, yet not all components of saskritization are Vedic.

3. Brahmanization is limited to Vedic culture/tradition, and many Hindus are not associated with Vedic tradition.

4. The term Hinduization was also proposed, although it essentially implies conversion.

5. In response to the recommendation that accculturation be employed M.N. Srinivas declined because acculturation takes a certain shape in Hindu society. Generalizations concerning acculturation over the world are premature.

THE PROCESS

v  Caste is the structural foundation of Hindu society, and understanding Sanskritization without reference to the structural context in which it happens is impossible.

v  Castes at the top of the system are more sanskritized than castes in the lower and intermediate levels, and this has contributed to the sanskritization of lower castes and outlying tribes.

v  The lower castes appear to have always attempted to adopt the higher castes' customs and ways of life. The theoretical presence of a prohibition on them adopting Brahmanical rituals and ceremonies proved ineffective.

v  Because this process was shared by all castes save the highest, it meant that Brahmanic rituals and ways of life proliferated among Hindus.

v  However, the immediate group that the lower castes imitated was the locally dominating group.

Ø  Among the customs taken over by lower castes are :       CLOTHING

                            JEWELLERY

                            COOKING

                            VEGETARIANISM

                            TEETOTALISM

        and at all times the changing the name of the                     CASTE

Ø  The Brahmins not only adopt the Brahminical rites and customs but also the institutions. Srinivas corroborates this by referring to marriage, position of women, and kinship. Among Hindus there is

v 
preference for virginity in brides

v  chastity in wives and                        This is especially marked                                                                                   the highest castes               

v  continence in widows

Ø  The lower have not very rigid in their Sex code, but as the castes rise in the hierarchy, it becomes more and more Sanskritized and in Sex and Marriage, the code of Brahmins is taken over. Widow remarriage and divorce are restricted.

Ø  Srinivas himself says, “Sanskritization results in harshness towards women.”  

Sanskritization also means the adoption of new ideas and values which have been expounded in the Sanskritic literature such as  Karma, Dharma, Papa, Punya, Mokha etc. These were essentially related to Vedas and the discussion confined mostly to Brahmins.

HELPS AND HINDRANCES

v  It takes decades and decades for a caste to rise in rank, which indicates the slowness of the process, and delay indicates opposition.

v  The most significant impediment to the process is the animosity of other castes toward any caste that attempts to improve its position. Political and economic forces are frequently employed. Physical force is sometimes used to keep lower castes from adopting higher caste customs and rituals.

v  According to B.S. Cohn, Thakurs utilized political and economic pressure, as well as physical violence, to keep the Chamars in control.

v  Westernization additionally hampers the Sanskritization process.

v  The trend of Sanskritization appears to have intensified recently.

v  According to Srinivas, two legal fictions supported the Sanskritization process. The prohibition does not apply to the ceremony itself, but rather to the recital of Vedic magic chants. The lower castes got around this by using Sanskrit verses from the Post-Vedic period. The second legal fiction was the substitute itself.

v  The second component is Western technology, which includes railways, press, radio, internal combustion engines, and airplanes. Because of this, communication is simpler and ideas propagate more rapidly.

v  Parliamentary democracy also played a role. Some upper caste norms, like as prohibition and monogamy, were included into the constitution.

v  The stratification of the Hindu society into castes has in a sense helped Sanskritization because in any hierarchal system, there is a tendency to imitate the customs, habits, manners of the top groups.

EXAMPLES:

ü  Cohn studied a village in U.P (Madhopur)

ü  Domestic ceremonies of the Chamars have been modelled increasingly upto leaders and devotees of the Siva Narayan sect.

ü  The Sacrifice of a pig which began the Chamar wedding ceremony has now been given up and replaced by the cutting of a nutmeg.

ü  Dowry is beginning to replace bride price

ü  A Brahmin conducts the wedding ceremony which previously was not done by them.

ü  Changes have been made in the death rituals.

ü  Pilgrimage is emphasized
















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