The Fieldworker and the Field: Problems and Challenges in Sociological Investigation. by M. N.

Srinivas; A. M. Shah; E. A. Ramaswamy

Review by: Peter M. Gardner
The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 40, No. 2 (Feb., 1981), pp. 412-414
Published by: Association for Asian Studies
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412 JOURNAL OF ASIAN STUDIES

whatever political accommodation they achieved during the Delhi Sultanate. From
his vantage point of thorough familiarity with the contexts, literary nuances, con-
ceits, and ideological poses of the era, he reminds us to distinguish the conquerors'
public relations among themselves from their need to build normal relations in
required arenas of interaction with the conquered. Even when the real threat to
Muslim rule in India was from Central Asian Mongols, the Hindustani Rajputs did
not exploit the situation and turn on their new overlords.
Case studies of Rajput political behaviorduring Mughal expansion into Rajasthan,
in a complex and changing environment of clan, marital, clientage, dharmic and
imperial loyalties, provide abundant material for Norman Ziegler's conclusion that,
because Mughal steps toward consolidation did not violate Rajput tenets regarding
order and precedence, a pattern of mutual benefit emerged through selective marriage
alliances, land grants for service, and the fulfillment of important cultural ideals,
which became a mainstay of the empire.
The editor's own contribution concerns those aspects of Akbar's and Jahangir's
personal activities and imperial ideology that shaped a distinct and lasting dynastic
identity. Using the recent work of S. A. A. Rizvi, but mainly his own close reading
of the contemporary documents, Richards shows that Akbar; in refusing to site his
capital at Delhi or Lahore, in fostering (with Abul Fazl) an image of his divine
illumination, and in tying a-s1zeablecore group of nobles as "imperial disciples" to
his person and persona, bound a unique network of loyalties to the authority of the
Mughal throne, which weathered many crises and survived into the eighteenth
century.
In the final contribution, Stewart Gordon focuses on five successions in Bhopal, a
relatively small eighteenth century state carved out of Malwa by Afghan military
adventurers, to infer four requirements for legitimate rulership of successor states:
ability to protect subjects; personal attributes of leadership, tact, etiquette, and
bravery;hereditary rights; and possession of a genuine sanad (patent of recognition)
from a strong power. These features are, of course, similar to those listed in classical
Indian texts and suggest an underlying continuity in the values of kingship in South
Asia. But Gordon is interested, as indeed are most of his fellow authors in their own
eras, in the ways such "rules" were followed, stretched, broken, or otherwise
manipulated in the dynamics of political and social conflict and cooperation.
The collection is, in sum, important not only for its historical insights, but for its
methodological sophistication and topical coverage. Aside from proofing problems,
inevitable in such photocopied typescripts, the volume is well produced. I recom-
mend it strongly for anyone studying South Asia, including students of its current
political arenas.
RICHARD B. BARNETT
Universityof Virginia

The Fieidworker and the Field: Problems and Challenges in Sociological

Investigation. Edited by M. N. SRINIVAS, A. M. SHAH, and E. A. RAMAS-
WAM-Y. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979. xii, 288 pp. Authors
Index. $13.95.
Occasionally one gets an intimate glimpse of an instrument, such as a camera,
that allows a wholly new understanding of both the mechanism and its product. In

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BOOK REVIEWS SOUTH ASIA 413

this book, M. N. Srinivas and two generations of his students and close associates
offer a series of extraordinarily candid and consistent inside glimpses of a major
research tradition. If their collection of eighteen personal accounts of fieldwork is
approacheddiscerningly, it could help us achieve a new, more reflexive social science
with a more knowledgeable readership.
Srinivas and his circle of social anthropologists or comparative sociologists are
acknowledged pioneers in the use of ethnographic field techniques within their own
society. True to that tradition, sixteen of the eighteen contributors report on field
experiences in India, ten within their home states or districts. Likewise, over
two-thirds of the contributors state that their main data-collecting technique is
"participantobservation." They have carried this informal mode of inquiry even into
industrial sociology.
Taken at face value, the volume is informative. A list of the scholars and their
subject matters gives an idea of the range and balance of the collection. M. N.
Srinivas, A. M. Shah, A. Chakravarti, K. R. Unni, and P. C. Joshi report on their
own village fieldwork experiences; K. A. Gupta, V. Dua, B. D. Varadachar, M.
Bellwinkel, and S. Patwardhangive accounts of urban field studies; N. R. Sheth, E.
A. Ramaswamy, B. S. Baviskar, A. A. Minocha, and C. Sivakumardescribe ethno-
graphic researchin factories, unions, a hospital, and colleges; and S. Seshaiah, T. N.
Pandey and R. Jayaraman report on one to three studies each done in various set-
tings inside and outside South Asia. What is more, in all but a few instances, the
researchdescribed was the initial field experience, some fifteen to twenty-five years
ago, of a scholar now in mid-career. Whether by accident or design, this has
permitted mature frankness about the deficiencies in preparationfor the projects and
the fears, delights, errors, and successes along the way.
There is much more to the volume than this. Until recently in India and
elsewhere, budding ethnographerswere sent into the field alone with an open research
frame. Preconceptions were to be avoided, the object being to steep oneself in a way
of life sufficiently to understand it in its own terms. There was some mystery to this,
because understanding was reported by the masters to be a product of adductive as
well as the more prosaic inductive inferences. Thus, novices went out hoping to be
graced by legitimizing flashes of insight.
The authors illustrate and the editors champion an unusually strict, explicit
version of this technique. Significantly, they do so at a time when difficulties funding
such uncontrolled training and the preemptive interest in formal deductive testing of
limited hypotheses have all but ended the use of the approach outside India. This
book tells us why. Since the 1950s Jawaharlal Nehru, JayaprakashNarayan, and
other compatriots of Gandhi's, including M. N. Srinivas (in the published version of
his 1963 RabindranathTagore lectures, given at Berkeley), have decried the isolation
of Indian intellectuals from the mass of the people. It is clear from several chapters in
the book as well as from the editors' words (p. 2) that Indian scholars have found in
participant observation an academic path to enlightened "respect"for the people and
"humility." Although the authors explain their scientific methods, e.g., four men-
tion starting fieldwork without hypotheses, the emphasis keeps returning to subjec-
tive phenomena, personal experiences, and such feelings as guilt about the poverty of
the lower castes. Five mention their urban upbringing and ten their high-caste birth,
with varying explicitness about the potentiality of these factors distancing them from
their subjects. Many write as if savoring the informal contacts achieved.

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414 JOURNAL OF ASIAN STUDIES

The editors highlight P. C. Joshi's chapter in their introduction. Schooled first in

Marxist politics, economic theory, and class analysis, Joshi encounteredMao Zedong's
insistencethat intellectualsunderstandpeasantproblemsthrough participatoryfieldwork
just when R. K. Mukherjee and D. N. Majumdar were urging him to do his own
fieldwork on rural economics. Although Joshi is one of four contributors lacking any
direct association with Srinivas, his dramatic account corroboratesthe others.
By focusing on an underlying theme, I have not done justice to the actual
diversity of the accounts. For example, Shah describes a stimulating way of combin-
ing ethnographic with ethnohistoric research in situ; Unni recounts how he found
various social niches and formed diverse individual relationships that allowed him to
tap extraordinarilyrich information; and Sivakumar and Jayaramanboth report on
the limitations of using participant observation in tightly structured, regimented
institutions.
PETER M. GARDNER
Universityof Missouri-Columbia

Art and Material Culture in the Paintings of Akbar's Court. By SOMPRAKASH

VERMA. Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1979. xxix, 150 pp. Glossary,Plates,
Appendix, Bibliography, List of Drawings, Index. $20.00. (Distributed in
U.S. by Humanities Press, Atlantic Highlands, N.J.)
Verma has accomplished what he set out to do. He wanted to describe the art of
painting and its techniques at the court of the Mughal emperor Akbar (1565-1605),
which he does in the first three chapters. Then he uses the paintings for an analysis of
Mughal culture, in the remaining seven chapters. By careful and intensive study of
the miniatures illustrating twelve major Akbari manuscripts, he shows us what they
can tell us about clothes and draperies, utensils, musical instruments, symbols of
royalty, arms and armor, technological devices, and the common people during this
period. This list, which is exhaustive, illustrates both the scope and the limitations of
Mughal painting as a historical source material.
Verma's catalog of historical evidence does not contain any surprises, but it does
confirm the technological backwardness of sixteenth century India. Note especially
Verma's descriptions qf firearms, hand tools, vehicles, and water-lifting devices.
Important areas such as metallurgy and textile production are not shown, because
they were beyond the scope of this art.
Most readerswill find Verma's discussion of the art and its techniques thought-
provoking. An appendix lists 238 names of painters who have work identified or
attributed to them in this period and, usefully, names the manuscript in which each
artist's work appears. Regarding the large number of painters, Verma writes "only a
few could develop a personal style," and "none of them could form a school" (p. 9).
The Mughal painter was a craftsman whose skills were blended into the collective
effort of painting illustrations for the the hand-copied books that graced the libraries
of kings and nobles. The paintings had to conform to the text, so the painter rarely
chose his own themes. Verma identifies the themes that encompass the subject matter
of most Akbari painting: scenes of war, court, camp, hunting, animal fights, execu-
tion of rebels, ceremonials, Hindu mythology, and scenes from poetry. It is a heavily
court-centered, in fact a king-centered art, and its subjects are treated with due
solemnity. There is "hardly any occasion . . . for lips to open in a smile" (p. 13).

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