Tribes of Western India
Tribes of Western India

Author: Dhananjay Kumar

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2022-07-29

Total Pages: 281

ISBN-13: 1000606988

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India has two key social formations, the castes and the tribes. Both groups can be studied from the perspective of society (samaj) and culture (sanskriti). However, studies on castes largely deal with social structure and less on culture, while studies on tribes focus more on culture than on social structure. What has resulted from this bias is a general misunderstanding that tribes have a rich culture but lack social structure. This volume emerges out of an in-depth empirical study of the social structure of five Scheduled Tribes (STs) in Gujarat, western India, viz., Gamit, Vasava, Chaudhari, Kukana and Warli. It analyses and compares their internal social organisation consisting of institutions of household, family, lineage, clan, kinship rules and marriage networks. The book also deals with changes taking place in the social structure of contemporary tribal societies. While the focus is mainly on the data from tribes of western India, the issues are relevant to pan-Indian tribes. An important contribution to the studies on tribes of India, this book will be of great interest to students and researchers of anthropology, sociology, demography, history, tribal studies, social work, public policy and law. It will also be of interest to professionals working with NGOs and civil society, programme and policy formulating authorities and bureaucrats.

Selves in Time and Place
Selves in Time and Place

Author: Debra Skinner

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 360

ISBN-13: 9780847685998

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Recently anthropology has turned to accounts of persons-in-history/history-in-persons, focusing on how individuals and groups as agents both fashion and are fashioned by social, political, and cultural discourses and practices. In this approach, power, agency, and history are made explicit as individuals and groups work to constitute themselves in relation to others and within and against sociopolitical and historical contexts. Contributors to this volume extend this emphasis, drawing upon their ethnographic research in Nepal to examine closely how selves, identities, and experience are produced in dialogical relationships through time in a multi-ethic nation-state and within a discourse of nationalism. The diversity of peoples, recent political transformations, and nation-building efforts make Nepal an especially rich locale to examine people's struggles to define and position themselves. But the authors move beyond geographical boundaries to more theoretical terrain to problematicize the ways in which people recreate or contest certain identities and positions. Various authors explore how people_positioned by gender, ethnicity, and locale_use cultural genres to produce aspects of identities and experiences; they examine how subjectivities, agencies and cultural worlds co-develop and are shaped through engagement with cultural forms; and they portray the appropriation of multiple voices for self and group formation. As such, this collection offers a richly textured and complex accounting of the mutual constitution of selves and society.

The Structure of Indian Society
The Structure of Indian Society

Author: A.M. Shah

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2012-12-06

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 1136197702

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This book has a collection of ten articles written during 1982–2007 and an exhaustive introduction on the structural features of Indian society, that is, the enduring social groups, institutions and processes, such as caste, tribe, sect, rural-urban relations, etc. The book views Indian society in contemporary as well as historical perspective, based on a wealth of field research as well as archival material. The book focuses on the significance of village studies in transforming the understanding of Indian society and also shows how urban centres have been useful in shaping society. Taking a critical look at the prevailing thinking on various structures and institutions, the author uses insights derived from his comprehensive studies of kinship, marriage, religion, and grassroots politics in advancing their studies. He points out the strengths and weaknesses of these structures and institutions and the direction in which they are changing with respect to modern time. As against the overwhelming emphasis on the hierarchical dimension of caste, this book focuses on its horizontal dimension, that is, every caste’s population spread over villages and towns in an area, its internal organization and differentiation based on networks of kinship, marriage, patron-client relationship, and role of endogamy versus hypergamy in maintaining its boundaries. The tribes are also seen in the same perspective, emphasizing the tribe-caste homology. Finally, the book provides information on important issues like policy of reservations, the reliability of censuses and surveys of castes and tribes, removal of untouchability, growth of organized religion and secularization.