André Béteille: A sociologist Bangladesh should read

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André Béteille: A sociologist Bangladesh should read miftahul@theda… Tue, 02/24/2026 - 00:21 Image André Béteille: A sociologist Bangladesh should read My first encounter with the ideas of Professor André Béteille was in July 1966 in an introductory sociology course at the University of Dhaka (at that time in East Pakistan) through Professor Tom Bottomore’s book, Sociology: A Guide to Problems and Literature (1962). The emphasis on general theory of social stratification for an explanation of the Indian caste system found its empirical reflection, as Bottomore refers to, in the work of Béteille, especially in Caste, Class and Power: Changing Patterns of Stratification in a Tanjore Village (1965). My second encounter with him was in the Fall of 1975 at Dalhousie University, Halifax where I was writing my Master’s thesis under Professor Bottomore, and he referred to read me Béteille’s “Closed and open social stratification” (1966). Reading Béteille after nine years under the Maple tree, I began to admire his empirical depth, comparative methodology, and theoretical clarity, which reshaped my understanding of social hierarchies in India. In the Christmas of 1976, I had an occasion to share some of my understanding of Béteille’s work. At that time, I was at York University, Toronto where I was doing my PhD. Professor K. Ishwaran, one of our faculty members, who wrote Tradition and Economy in Village India (1966), invited me for Christmas dinner-- Turkey with cranberry sauce, cooked by his Dutch wife. There we talked about the contribution of both Béteille and his supervisor M. N. Srinivas towards understanding the impact of social change on Indian social stratification. In order to realistically understand contemporary caste hierarchy, Béteille emphasised the “other factors such as class and power” that “have to be considered as independent variables” (1966). It appeared to me highly useful for comparative empirical research. It creates a distance from traditional essen