Land, Gifts and Relations among Agrarian Communities: Reciprocity, Prestige and Social Change in Rural Punjab, Pakistan
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Abstract
This paper shows how changing socio-economic significance of land in rural Punjab goes beyond agricultural production and material value, arguing that its role among agrarian communities remains far more significant. The study relies on exchange of gift which, serves the purpose to see how social networking through relations of reciprocity navigates prestige, status and positions of actors. Particular attention is given to the claims of identity based on relationship with land and the subsequent symbolic and embodied forms of capital. The paper is grounded in ethnographic research methods as an ongoing fieldwork in Khokhran, a revenue unit in Burewala, Vehari. The study traces the process of social change to account for the reasons and ways for transformation of larger agrarian relations when historical claims and contemporary changes in socio-economic outlook of the rural Punjab are rapidly unfolding. The article proves how gift exchange can be a useful way to understand such a dynamic process of many changes within claims of historical continuity and lived realities of many ways of transformation in social structure of the society.
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