Chris Smaje - Institutional History: Comparative Approaches to Race and Caste

General Ideas The emergence of capitalism or of modernity was the key issue posed by the classical sociologists which drew them to comparative historical analysis. This they regarded as a historical development initially unique to Western Europe in the modern period. But in the last years, historians have begun to argue that the priority of European industrialization is explicable in terms of contingencies affecting the modern world-system rather than any characteristics uniquely inherited by Europe from its past. Thus, whereas classical comparative sociology was contrastive, seeking differences which could account for the putatively unique dynamism of Europe, the new approach has been characterized as a connective historiography, showing how different parts of the world were integrated into a broader political and economic system through interactive processes whose provenance was not restricted to particular regions. At the same time postcolonial studies have suggested that the notions of static cultural difference framing comparative sociology owe much to the fictions of colonial ideology. The author, Chris Smaje, follows this approach of connective historiography, although he also stresses the importance of cultural differences and traditions, which has been minimalized in the last years. He focuses on Western Europe and the Indian subcontinent, pointing out contrastively some differences in the way politics or kinship and economics have developed.

The Concepts of Race and Caste Race ideology has often been thought of as a recent pathology of modernity, in contrast to caste ideology, which has been viewed as an ancient and static cultural system; Race has been defined as an antonym to politics, that is, racial classifications involve defining sets of people as social wholes whereby one or more others as partially or completely outside any reciprocal process of normative regulation of social relations, and therefore of mutual validation. Caste, on the other hand, has often been thought of as a 'failure of polities'. Here, normative regulation of social relations does obtain, but for some reason - suggestions have included the structural weakness of the regulating authority or its usurpation by a conquering power it is incomplete. What then needs to be explained in pursuing a historical sociology of race formation is how the flow of relatedness or similarity between people is averted, and a nonreciprocal sense of normative divergence in political relations formed. In contrast to the question of race formation, a historical sociology of caste formation is required to explain how a flow of similarity between people is established which mitigates, but does not fully transcend, normative divergence in political relations.

Race, Caste and the Ordering of Kin Relations Kinship - a sense of similarity or analogy which is partitioned and differentiated in various ways to constitute a morally appropriate ordering or system of relationships => logically implies the possibility of a morally inappropriate flow.

Race, caste and the ordering of political relations Sovereign polity Europe - tends to collapse the four orders into a tension between king and commoner, or ruler and ruled; Galactic or segmentary polity India- involves their full ideological articulation; The Sovereign Polity The Peace of Westphalia (1648) - conventionally considered the birth of the European system of modern territorial polities;

Chris Smaje aims to show that the modern conception of sovereignty involves a similar ideological architecture to that informing the medieval ideology of Christian kingship, suggesting that continuities exist in the conception of political society across the supposed watershed of modern and pre-modern thought. The roots of European political thought are often traced to Hellenic or Indo-European kingship; The King- priest and warrior - in Europe the two personalities of the king have usually been conjoined whereas the tension between them has been definitive of Indian kingship. The worldy kingdom as a mimesis of the sacred kingdom; Christ both man and god => the dual nature of the Christian king as Christs vicar on earth; The royal dynasties of Christian Europe remained very stable in contrast to the proliferating sovereignties of India. A territorial expression to religious or political identity had emerged in Europe by the High Middle Ages, and these identities were often expressed in somatic terms. One of the earliest who expressed an nationalism with ethnic tendencies was John Locke; Not all the people who fell within European boundaries naturally assumed the moral cast of citizens: they had to be actively shaped into an appropriate citizenry through a pervasive disciplinary regimen which inculcated techniques of self-discipline and an increasing levelling of status distinctions between the individual and the political formation. In 19th century biological ideas were added to this thinking.

The Galactic polity The conventional typification for Buddhist and Hindu political formations - political authority which - unlike the sovereign state - is shared and divided;

Materialist explanations - the empirical weakness of South Asian kingship, its inability to prevail over more local forces, due to the limitations upon the direct extraction of surplus value imposed by rice agriculture resulting in enduringly 'feudal' relations oriented to weak political centres. Idealist explanations in Indian thought significance is marked not by uniqueness, but by plurality and duplication. Different figures in the Indian political firmament, such as the ascetic renouncer, the priest, the king, the bandit and the clown could claim a certain degree of autonomy; The key tension here is between the king and the brahman; Various strategies available to Indian kings in overcoming their defective authority;

However, royal authority was ultimately circumscribed by the fact that the king was a partial embodiment, representing just a part of a more encompassing deity or cosmic order to which people had other kinds of access; Nothing quite like the 'persecuting society' of Europe manifested itself in India since the emphasis was always upon the subsumption rather than the excision of 'difference'.

Political economy The emergence of capitalism conventionally considered a European miracle with deep historical roots; Revisionist historiography stresses the economic dynamism in India rather than the political stagnation; Indian mercantile structures had reached a level of sophistication and rationalization in no way inferior to European ones; In addition, the emergence of capitalism occured not in the whole european continent, but rather in parts of England or the Netherlands. The origins of European colonial hegemony lie not in any particular technical or fiscal superiority, but rather in the advantages conferred by the institutional structure of its overseas trading companies.

Conclusions The emerging global trading world of the early modern period involved both Indian and European protagonists who, for a time, were on a roughly equal foot; Capitalism, understood as the ramification of social relations of commodity production, is compatible with both Indian caste society and the European nation-state, and the reasons for the priority of large-scale industrialization in certain parts of Europe under the impetus of capitalist relations of production are not to be found in any gross civilizational differences between it and other parts of the world.

Questions: 1. What is in your opinion the differences between race ideology and caste ideology? 2. Is there any point to talk any more today about race and caste ideologies? 3. Do you believe the formation of national identities nationalism was a project of the elites or not? 4. Do you believe that industrialization has stemmed from the Europes past, as a unique phenomenon, or this was not the case?