What is the significance of village studies in the history of Indian Sociology? What role did M. N. Srinivas play in promoting village studies ?
2. Detail study of rural India will provide first hand knowledge of village society. If scholar and researchers go for experience of field work in village and rural area of India. Their experiences of field work would provide detail and upto some extent for complete information and knowledge about rural sociology.
3. Village studies use important if we want to challenge the incomplete and wrong factual and informative knowledge of factual and informative knowledge of western sociologist who had done their research work keeping in view the imperial interest, ideologies and policies of the British government as well as colonial outlook and wrong policies of the western parts.
4. Role played by M.N. Srinivas promoting village studies : (i) M.N. Srinivas produce a significance body of work on certain themes related with Indian society and certain issues related with rural life of India.
(ii) M.N. Srinivas had strong connections in British social anthropology as well as American anthropology. Like G.S. Shurye and the Lucknow scholars. Srinivas succeeded in training a new generation of sociologist who were to become leaders of the discipline in the following decades.
(iii) The Indian village and village society remained a life-long focus of interest for Srinivas. Although he had made short visit to villages to conduct surveys and interviews, it was not until he did field work for a year at a village near Mysore that he really acquired first hand knowledge of village society. The experience of field work proved to be decisive for his career and his intellectual path.
(iv) Help and encouragement of other sociologist : Srinivas helped encourage and coordinate a major collective effort at producing detailed ethnographic accounts of village society during the 1950s and 1960s. Along with other scholars like S.C. Dube and D.N. Majumdar, Srinivas was instrumental in making village studies the dominant field in Indian sociology during this time.
