This study is a major addition to understanding the problems of social inequality and the nature of caste and kinship. A full account is given of the social structure of the region, emphasizing the continuity of principles, which govern relations between castes and relationships within castes.
The ethnographic data bear in particular on: the nature of untouchability; models of caste ranking; the way in which ''traditional'' family structures adapt to a diversification of the economy and the debate about the ''instability'' of regimes of generalized exchange.
Originally published in 1979.
