About the Book

India has a euphoria for rural society. Our national leaders and great personalities such as Rabindra Nath Tagore, Gandhiji and Prem Chand had a great fascination for villagers. Rural sociologists and anthropologists have spent decades in accumulating data about village life. Whatever may be our status, we are all concerned with the development of our villages. Let us believe in the idiom given by Gandhiji—if our villages prosper, we also prosper, and if our villages go to ruin, who can save us?

The village society, so rich and diverse in its culture, is undergoing tremendous economic and cultural transformation owing to the massive developmental efforts. In our enthusiasm to make our villages self-sufficient and link them with a wider society at regional and national levels, we should be intelligent enough to understand thoroughly the rural society.

The present work contains the generalizations of the empirical findings in the form of evaluation and analysis given by sociologists. These conceptual abstractions would help students, trainees, agriculturists, social workers, NGOs, planners and politicians develop an insight for the rural people.

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Contents

•   What is Rural Sociology

•   Nature, Subject Matter and Methods of Rural Sociology

•   Studies in Rural Sociology

•   Some Key Concepts of Rural Sociology

•   Sociology of Rural Life

•   Agrarian Social Structure

•   Land Tenure System and Land Reforms

•   Rural Social Stratification: Caste and Class

•   Rural Social Institutions: Family, Kinship, Marriage and Religion

•   Rural Aesthetics

•   Agrarian Unrest

•   Rural Development

•   Village Cooperatives

•   Village Environmental Crisis: Forest, Landuse, Water and Fuel

•   Panchayati Raj: An Era of Empowerment

•   Changing Rural Society

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About the Author / Editor

S.L. Doshi has taught sociology at the M.L. Sukhadia University, Udaipur and South Gujarat University, Surat. He is also a Visiting Professor at M.D. University, Rohtak. Dr. Doshi has written, co-authored and edited more than two dozen books including “Postmodern Perspectives on Indian Society, Modernity, Postmodernity and Neo-sociological Theory, Rural Sociology, Social Anthropology and Tribal Ethnicity, Class and Integration.”

P.C. Jain is currently teaching sociology at the Rajasthan Vidyapeeth University, Udaipur. He has worked extensively on the peasant movement in Rajasthan.

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