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Litigation as a Strategy for Personal Mobility: The Case of Urban Caste Association Leaders

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

Robert L. Kidder
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In its most general sense, social change involves change in the normative order of a society. Some would say that this necessarily involves a change in the patterns by which wealth is distributed. Others look for basic ideological shifts. Still others seek basic changes in the organizational modes by which functions are fulfilled. In each of these approaches, change involves mobility for some portion of the population. The means by which upward mobility is achieved often indicate the outlines of emerging social structures. Pursuit of mobility in a changing social order has entrepreneurial aspects because entrepreneurship involves the creative manipulation of existing relationships in unprecedented (non-normative) ventures. As such, it always proceeds in a normative limbo, relying on conventional expectations to support the unexpected. This study reports on a type of entrepreneurial career crafted in part from two seemingly divergent normative orders. It partakes of resources in the caste and the legal systems in India to produce an, as yet, nonroutinized pattern of personal mobility which, since its occurrence is widespread in urban centers, may be the basis for the formattion of a new class with considerable political and economic significance in the emerging Indian social structure.

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Articles
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The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 33 , Issue 2 , February 1974 , pp. 177 - 191
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1974

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