This article challenges the traditional understanding of the role of landownership in rural Punjab in the context of recent socio-economic restructuring of Pakistani society. Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork of contemporary practices of gift exchange (vartan bhanji) in a village, we argue that the Kammi biraderis, once considered lower class, now assert their elevated socio-economic status through vartan bhanji on important social occasions like marriages. Zamindars now see themselves in competition both with Kammi biraderis and each other for social prestige and superior status, as new claims made by different biraderis challenge traditional hierarchies created through historically structured socio-economic inequalities.
AkhtarP. (2013) British Muslim Politics: Examining Pakistani Biraderi Networks. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
2.
AlaviH. (1995) ‘The Two Biraderies: Kinship in Rural West Punjab’. In MadanT.N. (Ed.), Muslim Communities of South Asia: Culture, Society, and Power (pp. 1-62). Rev. & enl. edn. New Delhi: Manohar.
3.
AliI. (2003) Punjab under Imperialism, 1885–1947. Karachi: Oxford University Press.
4.
BarthF. (1960) ‘The System of Social Stratification in Swat, North Pakistan’. In LeachE.R. (Ed.), Aspects of Castes in South India, Ceylon and North-West Pakistan (pp. 113–46). London: Cambridge University Press.
5.
BéteilleA. (2010) ‘Class Structure in an Agrarian Society: The Case of the Jotedars’. In DasV. & DasR.K. (Eds), Sociology and Anthropology of Economic Life I: The Moral Embedding of Economic Action (pp. 37–55). New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
6.
BlimM. (2005) ‘Culture and Economy’. In CarrierJ.G. (Ed), A Handbook of Economic Anthropology (pp. 306–22). Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
7.
ChatterjeeP. (1989) ‘Caste and Subaltern Consciousness’. In GuhaR. (Ed), Subaltern Studies VI: Writings on South Asian History and Society (pp. 169–209). New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
8.
ChaudharyM.A. (1999) Justice in Practice: Legal Ethnography of a Pakistani Punjabi Village. Karachi: Oxford University Press.
9.
DaltonG. (1969) ‘Theoretical Issues in Economic Anthropology’, Current Anthropology, 10(1): 63–102.
10.
DubeS.C. (1967) Indian Village. New York: Harper Colophon Books.
11.
DumontL. (1999) Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and Its Implications. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
12.
EglarZ.S. (1960) A Punjabi Village in Pakistan. New York: Columbia University Press.
13.
EglarZ.S. (2010) A Punjabi Village in Pakistan: Perspectives on Community, Land, and Economy. Karachi: Oxford University Press.
14.
FowlerC. (2004) The Archaeology of Personhood: An Anthropological Approach. London: Routledge.
15.
GilmartinD. (1979) Tribe, Land and Religion in the Punjab: Muslim Politics and the Making of Pakistan. Berkeley, CA: University of California. (PhD Dissertation).
16.
GilmartinD. (2012) ‘Environmental History, Biradari, and the Making of Pakistani Punjab’. In MalhotraA. & MirF. (Eds), Punjab Reconsidered: History, Culture, and Practice (pp. 283–319). New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
17.
Government of Punjab (2007) Gazetteer of the Gujrat District 1921. Lahore: Sang-e-Meel Publications.
18.
GregoryC. (1982) Gifts and Commodities. London: Academic Press.
19.
HabibI. (1982) ‘Agrarian Economy’. In RaychaudhuriT. & HabibI. (Eds), The Cambridge Economic History of India: C. 1200-c. 1750 (pp. 48–76). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
20.
HabibI. (2005) ‘Jatts in Medieval Punjab’. In GrewalR. & PallS. (Eds.), Precolonial and Colonial Punjab: Society, Economy, Politics, and Culture. Essays for Indu Banga (pp. 63–75). New Delhi: Manohar.
21.
KhanM.H. (2006) Agriculture in Pakistan: Change and Progress 1947–2005. Lahore: Vanguard Books.
22.
LaidlawJ. (2000) ‘A Free Gift Makes No Friends’, The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 6(4): 617–34.
23.
Levi-StraussC. (1963) ‘The Bear and the Barber’, The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 93(1): 1–11.
24.
LyonS.M. (2013) ‘Networks and Kinship: Formal Models of Alliance, Descent, and Inheritance in a Pakistani Punjabi Village’, Social Science Computer Review, 31(1): 45–55.
25.
LyonS.M. & MughalM.A. (2016) ‘Ties That Bind: Marital Networks and Politics in Punjab, Pakistan’, Structure and Dynamics: eJournal of Anthropological and Related Sciences, 9(2): 110–22.
26.
MaussM. (1969) The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
27.
MughalM.A. (2014) ‘Calendars Tell History: Social Rhythm and Social Change in Rural Pakistan’, History and Anthropology, 25(5): 592–613.
28.
ParryJ. (1989) ‘On the Moral Perils of Exchange’, In ParryJ. & BlochM. (Eds), Money and the Morality of Exchange (pp. 64–93). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
29.
PlattnerS. (1989) Economic Anthropology. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
30.
QadeerM.A. (2006) Pakistan: Social and Cultural Transformations in a Muslim Nation. New York: Routledge.
31.
SiddiquiN.A. (2023) Under the Gun: Political Parties and Violence in Pakistan. Karachi: Cambridge University Press.
32.
SökefeldM. (1999) ‘Debating Self, Identity, and Culture in Anthropology’, Current Anthropology, 40(4): 417–48.
33.
SwedbergR. & GranovetterM. (1992) ‘Introduction’. In GranovetterM. & SwedbergR. (Eds), The Sociology of Economic Life, (pp. 1–26). Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
34.
TurnerV.W. (1957) Schism and Continuity in an African Society: A Study of Ndembu Village Life. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
35.
UsmanA. & AmjadA. (2013) ‘Caste Based Endogamy in a Punjabi Village of Pakistan’, South Asian Studies: A Research Journal of South Asian Studies, 28(2): 341–52.
