Caste Theory and the Identity Hypothesis: What’s the Matter?

In a manner of speaking, my object here is that elusive question, which some years before formally quitting academia the social anthropologist Declan Quigley had explicitly posed, namely, ‘Is a theory of caste still possible?’

But far from answering it determinedly, or even explicitly, I shift the focus of the question into the metanormative and explanatory status of what we can understand by the very idea of caste theory and the ‘identity hypothesis’ that govern its study today. This discursive shift is important, considering that the contexts, both historical and theoretical, bearing on the study of caste in India today has changed; and while the axiomatic of our discussion is certainly not a new one, I believe there are specific conceptual gains in understanding that we could absorb in attending to its contours. In perspective are aspects of Indian sociability and sociality that need fuller accounting outside (or beyond) the specific genealogies and analytical protocols which have constituted them.