Contemporary Society: Tribal Studies  (Hardcover, Deepak Kumar Behera)

This volume is a must for all the scholars in the fields of anthropology, sociology and childhood studies. It focusses on tribal children and their childhood. Scheduled Tribe constitute 8.2 per cent of the total population of India. Though Indian anthropology revolves round tribal study, yet tribal children/youth have not received due attention by social anthropologists. Tribal childhood as a “cultural construction” has hardly been studied by Indian anthropologists. This is a much neglected area of Indian anthropology. “Anthropology of children and childhood” is yet to form a sub-discipline in Indian anthropology. Sporadic writings on tribal children do not include the voices of children on matters affecting their lives. Anthropological data on children from different tribal societies are fragmentary, undoubtedly, in recent time, an anthropology of children has continued to grow and diversify. Tribal children often integrate work, play and school, moving back and forth between child- and adult-centred worlds in more flexible manners. The issue of how culture is learnt and how tribal children create their own culture has been dealt in this volume by specialists from anthropology and other related disciplines. Using recent ethnographic fieldwork with children, the contributors to this volume examines the ways in which concepts of “children” and “childhood” are understood by looking at the social representations of children in different tribal and aboriginal communities. Being first of its kind, the volume makes an attempt to provide a better understanding of “tribal children and their childhood” through a number of ethnographic studies.