Variation in Caste Homophily Across Villages and Contexts in Rural India

Abstract

This paper studies on caste homophily across seventy-five villages in rural Karnataka, India. Caste is conceptualized as a system of ethnic categories that map onto positions within the social structure of each village. Despite being a salient category across India, the caste structure is not uniform across villages, caste groups or network contexts. Using social network and demographic data collected by Banerjee et al. (2013) I investigate how caste homophily varies within villages across social contexts and between villages. Overall I find strong evidence of caste homophily across the majority of contexts; people tend to exchange resources and socialize with other people occupying a similar position in the caste order. However this varies across villages, relations, and groups. It appears to be strongest among higher caste groups, although it weakens with regards to the lending and borrowing of money, a vertical relationship between high and low castes. The lending of rice and kerosene and social relationships involving advice giving and important decisions are also particularly homophilous for both groups. This demonstrates how the strength of ethnic boundaries can vary based on the relational and spatial context.

Bridging Caste Divides: Middle‐Status Ambivalence, Elite Closure, and Lower‐Status Social Withdrawal

“…First, our analysis was limited to the three‐tiered status hierarchy in India, and we do not have data on the 4000 jatis or castes that are the underlying basis for the status hierarchy. Other scholars (Davidson, 2018) have examined status group homophily in the context of villages where finer grained caste data can be more plausibly gathered due to the more limited number of jatis in a particular localized context, but even in such limited settings it would be difficult to incorporate the fine‐grained caste data in network analysis. Considering that there are several thousand castes at the national level, rank ordering them and examining caste homophily in a network consisting of 90 people is not feasible.…”

“…The elite group is most well‐endowed with cultural, economic, and social capital (Bapuji and Chrispal, 2020; Pandey and Pandey, 2018; Zacharias and Vakulabharanam, 2011). Elite status also confers non‐material resources such as religion‐based assessments of purity/pollution (Davidson, 2018; Vaid, 2014). Although elite group members experience low toxicity‐linked barriers to ties across diversity, as highly resourced individuals, elites have little motivation to seek friendship ties across diversity to access resources.…”

“…Indian society offers a unique research context where a complex set of factors have led to a readily identifiable three‐level status hierarchy based on caste identity (Cotterill et al, 2014; Davidson, 2018; Deshpande, 2011; Qureshi et al, 2018b; Srinivas, 1996; Vaid, 2014; Zacharias and Vakulabharanam, 2011). The three‐tier status hierarchy in India includes a lowest‐status group that has faced ostracism and degradation for thousands of years, an elite group that is legitimized by religion, and a middle‐status group situated between the two.…”