Images of Nature and Culture in British and French Representations of Caste

This paper compares British and French representations of caste in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a formative period in the development of sociology and social anthropology in the two countries. The concepts of ‘nature’ and ‘culture’ in the two sociological traditions are examined with respect to their analyses of caste. The two discourses are also analyzed in relation to their respective colonial histories and national political cultures during this epoch. 1