Analysis of the population problems of tribes in Madhya Pradesh.

The present book attempts to critically interpret the existing literature on the people adapted to high and low altitudes.

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.

This volume is a collection of eleven studies conducted during the International Biological Programme on the biological structure of human populations.

Anthropological archaeologists have long attempted to develop models that will let them better understand the evolution of human social organization. In our search to understand how chiefdoms and states evolve, and how those societies differ from egalitarian 'bands', we have neglected to develop models that will aid the understanding of the wide range of variability that exists between them. This volume attempts to fill this gap by exploring social organization in tribal - or 'autonomous village' - societies from several different ethnographic, ethnohistoric, and archaeological contexts - from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic Period in the Near East to the contemporary Jivaro of Amazonia.

In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.

A plethora of literature is available and various studies have been undertaken on different aspects of tribal development. But very few on the analysis of tribal problems vis-à-vis programmes/policies for their development has remained more or less unexplored. The present study has attempted to plug this critical gap. In this book the author has delved deeper into the genesis of tribal problems, critically examined the programmes for their development in the past and present and offered some valuable insights for lifting them out of the morass of poverty and stagnation. It has traced successive shifts in tribal development policies and strategies at different points of time. A thumbnail picture has been presented on impact of the programmes on the stakeholders through case studies conducted in a remote district of a poverty ridden state. The results of the field study tend to conceptualise that despite input in terms of money and material and the so called coveted efforts and endeavours of public servants, there is an abysmal mismatch between the objectives and achievement. We are still far away from the point of their conscientisation. The study will be of immense academic and practical worth. The comprehensive analysis and critical review presented in this book on an important aspect of tribal development and finally the policy prescriptions suggested make it imperative reading for economists, anthropologists, planners, policy makers, administrators and members of the academic and research organizations.