Race and caste in the making of US sociology

In this article, we take a look at the influence of 20th-century provenance of caste as a category of academic importance meriting a debate in American sociology and beyond. Two actors participated in the animating discourse of caste and race in the annals of American sociology. Oliver Cromwell Cox took a class position to define caste, unmaking the hierarchies set in social structures. Instead, he advocated for a racialized system to understand the post-slavery capitalist America. Gerald Berreman represented a different camp that found social hierarchies to be co-determinant of relations and division arranged into a caste society. The debate over caste, nevertheless, admitted to the plausibility of castes contrasted with India’s caste system. However, caste categorization was found to be an appropriate application to the conditions of social inequalities. Gunnar Myrdal and other scholars of repute contributed to the debate. What remained limited in their theoretical contributions to the discussion was an inadequate focus on the lived reality and politics of the caste formulations in the postcolonial, socialist mode of production. A serious examination of untouchability, sub-castes and sub-sub-castes that regulate the kernel of the caste system as well as the racialized castes in India were not studied or referenced in detail. This article adds to that void a theoretical understanding of the discussion on caste, race and colour in sociological and anthropological disciplines.