The Kamar, Third Edition

Description

S.C. Dube's classic work The Kamar was written at a crucial juncture in Indian history - the end of colonial rule and the arrival of Indian independence. It is an important ethnography o an exploited and marginalized tribe in transition and a formative text in the history of Indian anthropology. Based on careful fieldwork and enlivened by ethnographic sensitivity related to the author's long familiarity with region and subject, the study presents a pioneering portrait of the Kamar, an adivasi community of hunter-gatherers and shifting-cultivators of Chhattisgarh and Orissa. Combining brevity of style, economy of expression, and simplicity of structure, in the book, Dube discusses key themes in anthropology and sociology: economic life, social organization, and customary law, myth, legend and ritual; rrligion, magic, and witchcraft; and questions of 'cultural contact' and 'tribal adjustment'.

This third edition comes with a new Prologue by Saurabh Dube.

About the Author

S.C. Dube (1922-1996), was Director of Research and Principal of the National Institute of Community Development, Director of Indian Institute of Advanced Study, and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Jammu.

Table of contents

Prologue, by Saurabh Dube
Preface to the New Edition
Introduction to the New Edition
Foreword; Preface to the First Edition
Acknowledgements
1. Introduction
2. Economic Life
3. The Social Structure
4. Phases of Life
5. Tribal Law and Its Breaches
6. Myth and Ritual
7. Culture Contacts
8. Problems of Tribal Adjustment
Glossary
Bibliography