“Is social mobility possible in closed systems of stratification? Illustrate from research work.” (2018)
Yes. A closed system forbids mobility in principle by fixing rank through birth, but fieldwork shows movement in practice. M. N. Srinivas called this the gap between the “book view” of caste and the “field view”. The mobility found is mostly collective, slow and negotiated.
Evidence from research
- M. N. Srinivas, Religion and Society among the Coorgs of South India (1952): introduced Sanskritisation, by which low castes adopt twice-born customs and claim higher rank over a generation or two. His Rampura work added the dominant caste, which gains rank through numbers, land and power.
- F. G. Bailey, Caste and the Economic Frontier (1957): in Bisipara, Odisha, the low-ranked Boad and Ganjam Distillers made money in the liquor trade, bought land from the warrior caste and changed the village’s balance of power.
- Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph, The Modernity of Tradition (1967): the Nadars, once toddy-tappers of Tamil Nadu, used trade, education and a caste association to claim respectability and political influence.
- Owen M. Lynch, The Politics of Untouchability (1969): the Jatavs of Agra first claimed Kshatriya status, then moved to Ambedkarite Buddhism and electoral politics. Their mobility shifted from imitating the hierarchy to rejecting it.
- Historical research: Srinivas drew on K. M. Panikkar’s observation that many ruling dynasties were not Kshatriya by origin and acquired that status after taking power.
- Recent survey: Devesh Kapur, Chandra Bhan Prasad, Lant Pritchett and D. Shyam Babu (2010) surveyed all Dalit households in blocks of Azamgarh and Bulandshahr in Uttar Pradesh. They found real change since 1990 in social practices and dignity as well as consumption, which a closed model would not predict.
Limits of such mobility
- Positional, not structural: in Srinivas’s words, a group changes place but the hierarchy stays.
- Collective: an individual cannot move alone, because endogamy ties his marriage prospects to his caste.
- Unequal access: it depends on prior economic or political gain, and the upward claims of untouchable castes were often resisted, sometimes violently.
- Driven from outside: most recent Dalit mobility comes from constitutional, educational and market change, which lie outside the traditional system.
Conclusion
Research shows closed systems are not static. They allow group mobility, but only on the hierarchy’s own terms, until external forces such as democracy, schooling and the market let mobile groups challenge those terms.