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Sociology Optional PYQ Solutions · Model answer

What do you understand by discrete castes and muddled hierarchies?

  • UPSC 2018
  • Caste System

The phrase is Dipankar Gupta's, from Interrogating Caste: Understanding Hierarchy and Difference in Indian Society (2000). Against Louis Dumont's Homo Hierarchicus (1966), which derived the whole caste order from one encompassing value, Gupta argues that caste is constituted by difference rather than by an agreed ladder, and that the ladder sociology inherited is an artefact…

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

What the full answer covers

  • Discrete castes
  • Muddled hierarchies
  • Illustrations
  • The critique
  • Conclusion

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