Wreckage of Pakistan s Afghan Policy

been hijacked by the introduction of postmodernism. The latter has challenged the epistemic validity of the ethnographic texts and thereby questioned the very foundation on which the discipline was formed. The deconstruction of the ethnological narrative has put the field itself and its method, fieldwork, into a maze of methodological and epistemological problems, if not into complete disrepute. Beyond Patronage and Exploitation, by asserting a 'traditional' methodology, reaffirms the necessity and the need for fieldwork to explore, understand and analyse changes taking place in society. If Patronage and Exploitation showed the relevance of an interdisciplinary approach to village studies, Beyond Patronage and Exploitation suggests the need to understand the dynamics of processes in the villages in terms of regional and countrywide circuits of labour and capital. These circuits, together with their impact on agrarian relations and particularly the landless, can only be studied by doing fieldwork. In fact it is difficult to find a comparable work that studies the vicissitudes of the landless poor over a 30- year period with such sensitivity while maintaining incisive analytic rigour. This book is testimony to the fact that one's First World status does not necessarily mediate in the construction of the knowledge of the 'natives'. The publication of Patronage and Exploitation gave a certain direction to anthropological work; Beyond Patronage and Exploitation is certain to become an important signpost in the trends that are remaking social science in India.