Books by E. R. Leach

When this book was originally published in paperback in 1971, one of the most debated themes in Indian sociology was the meaning of the term caste. At one extreme was the argument that caste cannot be isolated from its religious matrix; on the other, that it is a rigid form of social class hierarchy. This book tested these two hypotheses against the data.

A collection of essays from Edmund Leach, one of the original voices in the social anthropological tradition.