Family and social change in modern India / edited by Giri Raj Gupta

In a series, "Main Currents in Indian Sociology," this volume on family relations deserves a central place. Whatever else the socio logical study of society may encompass, it must include family roles and relations. It is one of those central truisms, so obvious that it is easily overlooked, that each person lives, usually for most of his and her life, with the others of his family; that his social character and his individual personality are molded by them; that shifts in family roles and responsibilities, in their collective and cumulative effect, have a great deal to do with changes in the entire society. So crucial are family relations to a whole society that it is sometimes difficult to resist portraying them as though they were the single core of social relations, though in fact family interactions may be as much affected by other social forces as they affect them.

Moreover, it is tempting to speak of the family, though each is a different and ever-changing constellation of individual lives. Yet many families, even across the vast population of India, do share certain concepts about family relations. There are, as several of the essays here show, significant variations in family arrangements by region, caste, and class. But there are also certain ideas and behaviors that are widely followed and these, indeed, constitute a distinguishing characteristic of Indian civilization.

If we take the present set of papers on Indian family relations as one sample of main currents of research, we may ask whether there is any clear direction apparent in these studies or whether, like a great river in flood, they spill over into diverse and diverging channels. We may also ask how these currents are affected by the environment through which they run, that is by the general economic, political, and intellectual features of the time. And, in turn, we should ask whether and how they affect that environment, what impact these currents are having on the life of the nation and beyond any one nation.

The ten papers of this volume have been arranged in logical order by the editor, but they also fall into a somewhat different set of cate gories. Four have to do with village life, usually villages in which the respective authors have lived and which they have studied as participant observers. The emphasis in them is on regular, struc tural interactions within families, and on transactions and symboisms among the families of a locality. Four other papers take in wider territory, discussing family relations in town as well as in village, several broad regions, and in one paper, across several countries. The method used in two of these papers is mainly that of the question naire and of the analysis of of questions. answers given to the list of The focus is on changes in family relations as social and economic conditions change. Finally, two of the papers concentrate on the changing relations roles of women, a matter not only important for family but also much in the eye and mind of the public, at least of certain influential elements of the public.

of the four papers that center on village life, two discuss gift. giving, an important aspect of family life and of other village social relations. They do so inquite different ways, yet these two papers. supplement each other well. Ved and Sylvia Vatuk present data from rural western Uttar Pradesh, show how the numerous terms. and types of gift giving can be grouped into six major categories. Two of these categories involve asymmetrical giving, in that the donor of things or services must not receive comparable gifts from the recipient. Such gifts are made mainly to deities and daughters, and to the people closely associated with both. Any returns for such gifts may only be through the religious merit, or personal. altruistic satisfaction, or the social esteem that such gifts yield for their donors. The gifts to daughters have great economic and social importance in family relations; they are made, often over many years, not only to a daughter but also to her husband, affines, and children.

Three of the gift-giving categories entail the external relations of a family with those who provide services, both ritual and craft. Finally, there are the gift exchanges among agnates and neighbors, made usually at life-cycle ceremonies. These should be roughly balanced. out over the years and are the subject of much discussion in a family and village. Though a general balance is expected, lavish expendi tures are a principal avenue toward higher prestige. The reciprocal, complementary gifts as well as the asymmetrical, complimentary ones express, reinforce, and help creat social bonds. They are both symbolic and tangible manifestations of a family's internal and external success, or of the lack of it.