SERICUL TURE AND THE PROCESS OF CHANGE - Institute for ...

CHAPTER VIII
SOCIAL RELATIONS AND NETWORKS
Sericulture contributes towards greater social interaction at all
levels. It not only reinforces dependency relations with certain
households within the village but also renews and consolidates kinship
linkages. It initiates interactional exchanges between individuals within
the village, for knowledge-update of sericulture as well as for sharing
the ups and downs of silk-worm rearing. It also establishes new
interactional networks with sericulturists of different villages through
periodical contacts to gain wider linkages. It also brings the sericulturists
closer to the government officials and bureaucratic set-up. An attempt
has been made here to highlight these these social relations and networks
in terms of individual, familial, kinship and inter-caste interactions.
Further, it has also been attempted to identify the opportunities of
linkages outside the village, including inter-village networks and
bureaucratic interactions.
Friendship Interactions
The study of different villages reveals that sericulturists tend to
be out-going and initiate new friendship cliches and strengthen the
existing relationships. Such relationships are well evident in the K K
Pura where many of the youngsters have taken up sericulture with
success. Frequent interactions among a group of sericulturists and
informal exchange of ideas are very common among the sericulturists of
the cluster. As it has been seen earlier, most of the main sericulturists
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