The Modernity Of Tradition Political Development In India

Stressing the variations in meaning of modernity and tradition, this work shows how in India traditional structures and norms have been adapted or transformed to serve the needs of a modernizing society. The persistence of traditional features within modernity, it suggests, answers a need of the human condition. Three areas of Indian life are analyzed: social stratification, charismatic leadership, and law. The authors question whether objective historical conditions, such as advanced industrialization, urbanization, or literacy, are requisites for political modernization.

Analysis of variations in the meaning of modernity and tradition and examination of how they infiltrate and transform each other within the framework of political development in India - covers social structures, religion, social change, etc. References.

Reprinted in India for the first time, the book is now a classic text in the field of sociology and political science. It has greatly influenced our understanding of political development in a conservative, tradition-bound society like India. By showing that caste groups, as other traditional ascriptive groups, reassert their identity in different modern contexts in new ways, the book has given us a new perspective and understanding of the complexities of political development and social change in India.

Volume 5 in the Studies in Political Development Series. Originally published in 1965. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Does activism matter? This book answers with a clear "yes." American Indian Ethnic Renewal traces the growth of the American Indian population over the past forty years, when the number of Native Americans grew from fewer than one-half million in 1950 to nearly 2 million in 1990. This quadrupling of the American Indian population cannot be explained by rising birth rates, declining death rates, or immigration. Instead, the growth in the number of American Indians is the result of an increased willingness of Americans to identify themselves as Indians. What is driving this increased ethnic identification? In American Indian Ethnic Renewal, Joane Nagel identifies several historical forces which have converged to create an urban Indian population base, a reservation and urban Indian organizational infrastructure, and a broad cultural climate of ethnic pride and militancy. Central among these forces was federal Indian "Termination" policy which, ironically, was designed to assimilate and de-tribalize Native America. Reactions against Termination were nurtured by the Civil Rights era atmosphere of ethnic pride to become a central focus of the native rights activist movement known as "Red Power." This resurgence of American Indian ethnic pride inspired increased Indian ethnic identification, launched a renaissance in American Indian culture, language, art, and spirituality, and eventually contributed to the replacement of Termination with new federal policies affirming tribal Self- Determination. American Indian Ethnic Renewal offers a general theory of ethnic resurgence which stresses both structure and agency--the role of politics and the importance of collective and individual action--in understanding how ethnic groups revitalize and reinvent themselves. Scholars and students of American Indians, social movements and activism, and recent United States history, as well as the general reader interested in Native American life, will all find this an engaging and informative work.

This anthology documents the search of Indian intellectuals, politicians, and writers to forge a cultural identity despite and because of colonialism. The first part brings together major voices in India's struggle against colonialism; the second presents interpretive essays on the legacy of the great nationalist leaders; modernization and its discontents; the communal, ethnic, and interfaith relationships; and the future course of life in post-colonial India. No index. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR