From landlords to software engineers: migration and urbanization among Tamil Brahmans

Fuller, C. J. and Narasimhan, Haripriya (2008) From landlords to software engineers: migration and urbanization among Tamil Brahmans. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 50 (1). pp. 170-196. ISSN 0010-4175

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Abstract

In south India's rapidly expanding information technology (IT) industry, the small, traditional elite of Tamil Brahmans is disproportionately well represented. Actually, no figures to confirm this assertion exist, but all the circumstantial evidence suggests that it is true, especially among the IT professionals and software engineers employed by the leading software and services companies in Chennai (Madras).Since the nineteenth century, Tamil Brahmans have successfully entered several new fields of modern professional employment, particularly administration, law, and teaching, but also engineering, banking, and accountancy. Hence the movement into IT, despite some novel features, has clear precedents. All these professional fields require academic qualifications, mostly at a higher level, and the Brahmans' success is seemingly explained by their standards of modern education, which reflect their caste traditions of learning.

Item Type:	Article
Official URL:	http://journals.cambridge.org/jid_CSS
Additional Information:	© Cambridge University Press 2007
Divisions:	International Development Anthropology
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HT Communities. Classes. Races G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GN Anthropology Q Science > QA Mathematics > QA76 Computer software
Date Deposited:	07 Apr 2008 14:28
Last Modified:	11 Dec 2024 23:24
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/4138

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