62 SOCIAL SCIENTIST are limited to castes, communities, kinship, traditions and culture. ^ In village studies, what matters most is the conceptualisation of the role of the village in the process of rural development. Both social anthropologists and economists, while trading charges and counter-charges on the methodological issue of how to conduct village studies in the field, have paid little attention to the question of how to conceive the village as a unit of investigation in the process of rural development. Perhaps, economists are not bothered about this basic issue because of their faith in the neo-classical paradigm, and social anthropologists have shown less concern about the same because of the notion of'encapsulation' of villages or small groups normally studied by them within the 'wider economy' or by 'the State". -To quote John Harriss: "The effect of this is to abstract both 'village! (where this is the main unit of study) and 'State' from reality and are not simply 'encapsulated' by it. The possibility that changes within villages could also bring about changes in the State—that village and state are joined in a dialectical unit—is ignored in the notion of encapsulation/'2 Concept of Development Growth and development may be two different terms but conceptually they are inseparable. The history of social evolution and development shows growth in material production as the essential condition for the development of all types of societies. Since social development is a function of the social process of production, tfce concept of growth is useful for conceptualising the term 'economic development^. The conditions of producing and increasing output are set out by the forces and relations of production. The use of given productive forces characterises the techno-organisational form of production and the existing production relations show the socio-economic structure 'of production. Thus economic development as a spatio-social process of growth in material production depends on the development of productive forces and the relations of different groups of people using the forces of production in the process of material production, s» Conception of the Village Conceiving of the village as a unit of investigation into the process of development depends on two things: the concept of deve^ lopment and the characterisation of the village as the unit of rill'al society. The concept of development as defined above refers to a s^lio-social process of growth in material production. Hence, while investigating the village as a unit of study in rural development, the techno-organisaiional, form and socio-economic structure of pm*-duction should be taken into consideration. Village studies base4 6n this will explain tti^ process of development which will, in turn, hselp