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Sociology Optional PYQ Solutions · Model answer

Discuss Andre Beteille’s account of the relationship between caste, class and power as a change from symmetrical to asymmetrical One.

  • UPSC 2016
  • Caste System

André Béteille's Caste, Class and Power: Changing Patterns of Stratification in a Tanjore Village (1965), based on fieldwork in Sripuram in Thanjavur, asks what Louis Dumont's single-principle system cannot: what happens when ritual rank, wealth and political power stop coinciding. His answer is a movement from cumulative to dispersed inequality.

You are reading the opening of the model answer. The full answer is part of Sociology Optional PYQ Solutions.

What the full answer covers

  • Three orders, held analytically apart
  • The symmetrical past
  • What broke the congruence
  • The asymmetrical present
  • Critical assessment
  • Conclusion

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