S. C. Dube was born on 25 July 1922 in Seoni in Madhya Pradesh. He received a degree in Political Science. The course in Political Science had a special paper in Social Anthropology. He then conducted a study of the Kamars of Raipur in order to formulate a doctoral dissertation in Sociology. Dube studied their society holistically using traditional anthropological methods. Dube became lecturer at Nagpur and Osmania University. He even went to England as a Lecturer in Anthropology. In the early 1950, he developed keen interest in village studies, especially of those villages which had a multi-caste social structure. He came back to India to study a village in Hyderabad called Shamirpet. He studied the interrelationships of Hindus and Muslims to understand jati relationships that existed between communities. Dube, as a part of field research, also studied the impact of community development planning on villages.
He conducted field researches in Chhattisgarh, Telangana (A. P.) and West Orissa. He attended the World Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences at Vienna and the UNESCO working group on human progress and technological change held at Paris in 1953. In 1962 he went to Pakistan as a UNESCO consultant to advice on a major study of leadership in that country. He attended many seminars and conferences around the world. He won the S. C. Roy Gold Medal (1976), the Indira Gandhi Gold Medal (1993). In 1972, he became the Director of the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies till 1978. He was the Chairman (1983-88) of the Madhya Pradesh Higher Education Grants Commission. He was granted an honorary doctorate from Kashi Vidyapeeth (1987) and Kanpur (1994) University. He also gave the K. K. Birla Foundation Lecture in 1995. He died in 1996.
His important publications include- The Kamar (1954), Indian Village (1955), India’s Changing Villages: Human Factors in Community Development (1958) and Power and Conflict in Village India. He has contributed many important articles in renowned books and several research articles in national and international journals. His major contribution to field of Social Anthropology is discussed below.
Village study
In his book Indian village (1955) Dube elucidates the complete study of village Shamirpet in Telagana. The book presents adequate information to historical, geographical and political background as well as social, economic and religious practices of village in India. His aim has been to present a clear picture of an Indian village life and has basically used structural-functional approach. He stated that economic system of rural India is based on occupational mobility, interdependence and caste’s functional specialization. He emphasized that caste ranking in villages mainly relies on rituals and not economic system. Family ceremonies, Village ceremonies and communal festivals are major types of religious services and festivals are observed in the village. The Muslims and Hindus interact with each other during festivals.
Community development programme (CDP)
Dube in his book India’s Changing Villages: Human Factors in Community Development (1958) explains the impact of CDPs on Indian villages. He strongly emphasized the importance of human elements in community development. He evaluated the changes and problems emerged from these programmes. He also worked on Red tapism in Indian bureaucracy.
Political anthropology
In his paper entitled, ‘Dominant Caste and Village Leadership’, Dube suggested that political power was restricted to few individuals rather than diffused in caste. Srinivas considered concept of dominant caste pivotal in evaluation of power relation in rural social life. Dube disagreed from Srinivas in view of notion of dominant caste. He emphasized that caste ranking in villages mainly relies on rituals and not economic system. However in certain instances as in case of Coorgs of South India economic dominance signifies high status owing to ritual rationalization. In each village, there are some dominant individuals, who have decisive say in political participation of the members of a village.
Family planning research
In one of his monograph on family planning he studies the diffusion of IUCD (intra-uterine contraceptive device) on family planning in India. The study emphasized the necessity to develop a criterion to measure variables related to general background variables indicating life orientation and life style of the respondents.