26-28 January, 1995
Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India

The Village in Asia Revisited

The city of the sacred snake, Anant, and capital of the South Indian state Kerala, Thiruvananthapuram, was the location where more than thirty scholars from various Social Science disciplines gathered to discuss a series of methodological and empirical questions regarding the use and scope of village studies undertaken in South and Southeast Asia both at present and in the past. Many of these questions were considered exhausted or closed. Nothing could be farther from the truth! The broad scope of the papers presented at the conference and the lively discussions among the participants turned out to be a fresh assessment of the state of art of revisit studies, placed mainly in an Asian context.

By John Kleinen

The inter-disciplinary and international workshop 'The Village Revisited', organized jointly by the Centre for Asian Studies Amsterdam (CASA) and the Center for Development Studies CDS), Trivandrum was held in Thiruvananthapuram from 26 to 28 January 1995. The workshop was sponsored by IDPAD, the Indo-Dutch Programme for Alternatives in Development. Conveners were Prof. Jan Breman (CASA), Prof. André Beteille (Delhi School of Economics) and Prof. K.P.Kannan (CDS), assisted by Drs. Iet de Groot (CASA) and Mr. Phil. Roy (CDS).
Different historical periods and differences in research perspectives produce various results in village studies, which are attacked or sometimes openly reversed when restudies are undertaken. The simple answer of stressing the need to undertake diachronic and synchronic approaches simultaneously does not guarantee a sound analysis of the social dynamics, which is the goal of restudies.
Besides the raising of methodological problems, a series of restudies were presented which stressed the heterogeneity of tenancy relations, the uneven development of land and labour markets and the structural transformation of villages in terms of caste and village based occupations. The village as an engendered, and thus, contested terrain also occupied a central place.
Given the fact that the majority of the scholars came from South Asia, the relationship between caste and economic status was a hotly debated topic. Nevertheless, on the whole, the papers presented at the conference pointed to a wider range of tensions, contradictions, and determinants which circumscribe the terrain of rural social change in Asia. Revisit studies, it is asserted, are a legitimate mode of social enquiry required to capture the dynamics of change characterized by the interplay of categories like class, caste, kinship, religion and gender.
At the end of the workshop the preparation of a publication of a selection of the papers was proposed and accepted. A rapporteur's report by T.T. Sreekumar (CDS) will be published in the Economic and Political Weekly (India).

List of Papers

Shapan Adnan, Social Organization and Class Domination amongst the Peasantry: structural community and change in villages of Bangladesh
Jan Breman, The Village in Focus
Arvind N. Das, The Village Revisited: some vignettes, more questions
Göran Djurfeldt & Staffan Lindberg, Coming Back to Thaiyur: health and medicine in a 25 year perspective
Martin Greely & Rabeya Rowshan, Poverty and Well-Being in Bangladesh
Leela Gulati, The Squatter Settlement "Kootam"
Barbara Harris, A Town in South India: two decades of revisits
Zawawi Ibrahim, Malay Peasantry and Immigration Labour in Plantation Society
S. Janakarajan, Village Resurvey: some issues and results
J. Jeyaranjan, "Revisit" Approach to Rural Dynamics: towards a critique
John Kleinen, The Past Revisited: ethnographic praxis and the colonial state in Vietnam
Peter Kloos, The Twice Studied. Restudies in Anthropology: modalities and possibilities
Pauline Kolenda, Castes and Kolhus in Khalapur, Western Uttar Pradesh. The Economics of Running a Kolhu
Joan Mencher, The Village over Time: Kerala
Otto van den Muijzenberg, Never a Communal Paradise. The Village Revisited in the Philippines
Wendy Olsen, Village Resurveys: critical realist research that rejects positivism?
Ashwani Saith & Ajay Tankha, Dynamics of Land Relations: some findings at village level. An Indian Case Study
Willem van Schendel & Mahbubar Rahman, Gender and the Inheritance of Land: living law in Bangladesh
Ravi Srivastava, Beneath the Churning: change and resilience in producer strategies in Uttar Pradesh agriculture. 



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