Elaborate on M.N. Srinivas's structural-functionalist approach to the study of Indian society. (UPSC CSE Mains 2022 - Sociology, Paper 2)
M.N Srinivas has introduced the tradition of macro-sociological generalization on micro- anthropological insight and of giving a sociological sweep and perspective to anthropological investigation of small-scale communities. He was very much influenced by Radcliffe-Brown’s idea of structure. Radcliffe-Brown was his teacher at Oxford. M.N Srinivas is credited to have initiated a new line of structural-functional analysis in sociological and social anthropological research in India. Srinivas did not rely on Western textbooks or indigenous ancient texts to know about his countrymen, rather he tried to know them through direct observation, field experience and field study. Srinivas is of the view that there are two basic concepts to understand our society—book view and field view.
Text view or book view refers to the study of the Indian society by interpretation of ancient texts such as Vedas, Puranas, Manusmriti, Ramayana, Mahabharata etc. This text-based approach is also known as Indology. Indologists use the literature of ancient Indian society such as ancient history, epics, religious manuscripts and texts etc.to study the social institutions of India.
Field view in common parlance refers to the study of any phenomenon with the help of collecting data from the concerned field with the help of intensive field work, Beteille viewed that field view is actually an orientation to the experiences of people, with their inner tensions and contradictions which one seeks to understand and interpret.
Srinivas believes that knowledge about Indian society can be gained through fieldwork. So, he emphasized on intensive field work and wrote many books on the basis of the field data. According to him, book view gives a distorted picture of any phenomenon. His fieldwork has helped us in revealing many facts about Indian society. After completing his fieldwork in Coorg and Rampura, he has come up with many new concepts like Sanskritisation, dominant caste, etc.
It must be mentioned that the fieldworker faces many difficulties during a fieldwork. His book The Fieldworker and the Field gives a detailed description of the problems which a fieldworker faces in making a study in rural India.
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