Chapter 10: Social Customs and Lifestyles

This chapter was quite interesting to read. There was a lot of different information in this chapter, so it was a little difficult to get ahold of it all! The chapter again emphasized the importance of family, community, and socialization in the Indian culture. This has been discussed many times throughout the book--so it is clearly a very important aspect of the culture. The author even says that "childhood socialization, family, shared work, neighborliness, and interdependence create strong bonds, the bedrock to social life." I also enjoyed reading the section in this chapter about the "big" and "little" people. The people are subdivided into those who are powerful and those who are less powerful. This can also be described as those who are "cooked" and those who are "raw." I thought that parallel was quite funny! Patrons are the "big" people in the community, and those below the patrons are subordinate and are supposed to follow the instruction of the patron. This reminds me of our government and the way it runs (in a way).

I also thought it was funny when the author states that "ideas of hierarchy are part of the social etiquette." When I read about the hierarchy of subcastes and the way people are ranked, at first glance it seems appalling. The truth is we all rank people, in the United States and everywhere. The only difference is that we do it behind close doors, we think it, or we whisper it--but there are still hierarchies in our society. In India however, it is accepted social etiquette. I just thought this was an interesting realization. I'm not qualifying it to say that it's right to "rank" people, or saying that it's a good thing even--it's just interesting to say that it happens to some extent everywhere, I believe. Each subcaste regards itself as having a separate history, mythological origin, and relationship to all others. Subcastes divide into two family units. One unit is the household, the other is a group whose members regard themselves as closely related, but too close for marriage. The chapter also discussed how the ideal household is through the decent of the male line. This was discussed in earlier chapters, so I don't feel like there is too much to report from this particular section of the reading.