Seeing Society from Botton Up

Seeing Society from Botton Up BERNARD COHN of the University of Chicago enjoys a high reputation among anthropologists and sociologists specialising on India. He has published several valuable papers on social and cultural change among the Chamars of Madhopur (in eastern UP) and on the history of the Benares region generally. He has also been interested in the analysis of regions in their historical context, in the study of the censuses and their effects on social structure as perceived by Indians, and in problems of modern Indian historiography. Finally, the general question of the relation between anthropology and history obviously interests him greatly, the first three essays of this book being devoted to it. Thanks to the work of scholars such as Cohn the need for a rapprochement between anthropologists and historians is now widely realised. A new academic animal is emerging as a result, the anthropologist- turned-historian, and the rarer, historian- turned-anthropologist.