• This volume brings together the seminal contributions of the sociologist Professor A. M. Shah to the study of the household and family in India.
• The Household Dimension of the Family in India (Book One) was widely regarded as a landmark study when it first appeared in 1973.
• It combines micro and macro perspectives, and offers a rigorous critique of the stereotype of the ‘decline’ of the joint family under conditions of industrial modernisation. This book continues to be used as a principal text in many family and kinship courses in sociology departments across the country.
• It is reproduced here with the original foreword by M. N. Srinivas and the original Annotated Bibliography.
• The Family in India: Critical Essays (Book Two), first published in 1998, covers a wide range of theoretical, methodological, substantive and policy issues relating to the family.
• Book Three, titled Essays on the Family and the Elderly, contains three more recent essays, which explore the effects of changes in the family on the elderly; explain the relevance of census data for studies of the household; and comment on the current state of family studies in India from the perspective of the author’s many decades of engagement with the field.
• The Writings of A. M. Shah has a foreword by Professor Patricia Uberoi.

A. M. Shah retired as Professor of Sociology, Department of Sociology, Delhi University, in 1996.

Foreword by Patricia Uberoi

Introduction

BOOK ONE The Household Dimension of the Family in India: A Field Study in a Gujarat Village and a Review of Other Studies

Foreword by M. N. Srinivas

Part I: The Household in a Gujarat Village

Part II: The Study of the Household and Related Dimensions of the Family in India

Annotated Bibliography

BOOK TWO The Family in India: Critical Essays

BOOK THREE Essays on the Elderly and Family Studies

References