ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the logic of contingent alterity as one structuring operative principle of India's social space. The study of cultural transmission of meanings, religions, political and socioeconomic ideas in society and across societies over a period that is usually measured in months, decades or millennia is indispensable. Transmitting Culture is the object of study, similar to the language, the religious tradition and the particular social order of a society. The experience of the Other is a significant part of human life. The egalitarianism of Western civilization strengthened by the technical- industrial progress and dominance of scientific ideas led to the claim of the assimilation of the Other. Moving in different social spaces is becoming constitutive for the habitual development of social actors. In India, social space is structured by cultural alterity and diversity. Cultural capital is incorporated in large part through mimetic processes, because mimetic learning is a basic form of cultural learn.
