WIKIPEDIA: Caste System

 

WIKIPEDIA: Caste System

A caste system is a form of social's

stratification in which castes are hierarehically organized and saparated from each other by rules of ritual purity. The lowest strata of the caste system are

referred excluded from the performance of rituals. Which confer religious purity in this hierarchical system, each caste is ritually purer than the one below it. 

The caste system is an illustration of social closure (q.v) in which access to wealth and prestige is closed to social groups which are excluded from th performance of purifying rituals. This ritual segregation is further reinforced by rules of endogamy (q.v.) In M wher's study of India (19584) caste represented an important illustration of social ranking by prestige and formed

part of a wider interest in pariah groups. If caste are maintained by social closure, be they originated in either the segregation of ethnic groups or in occupational specialization; in both cases, easte

regulated access to the market and to social prestige in a competitive struggle between social groups. 

There is considerable debate as to whether the caste system is specific to Hindu culture, or whether its principal features are more widely found in other societies where hierarchically organized, endogamous

strat are present. In the first position, caste cannot be defined independently of 'caste system', which is specific to classical Hindu society. While the Hindu caste system is organized in terms of four major custers

(Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaisya and Sudra), there is much diversity at the local, village level, where the major castes are further divided into smaller gouping's of subcastes which are called Jati. In principle, one is

born into a caste and social mobility between castes is impossible. In practice, however, it is possible for a subeaste as a whole to bring about an improvement in its

standing within the hierarchy of prestige. Those special groups which can successfully acquire or imitate

the ritual practices of privileged castes can experience upward mobility by a process known as sankritization.

The caste system is of interest because. 

(i) It represents an laternative to class as a

principle of social stratification, and

(ii) It has been regarded as a barrier to

economic, specifically capitalist, development, in that caste inhibits labour mobility. Against this latter view it has to be noted that caste does not inevitably or invariably prohibit people of different castes working together.