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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 organization 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"--

The Indian middle class has grown rapidly over recent years, and constitutes a significant proportion of the global workforce, as well as a substantial market for consumer goods, given India's status as one of the most populous countries in the world. However, the growth of India's middle class is not merely an economic phenomenon. This volume, containing nineteen essays, an editorial introduction, and a foreword by Lord Meghnad Desai, therefore examines the role of the Indian middle class in the country's economic development, as well as in social, cultural and political change. The Trajectory of India's Middle Class brings together diverse lines of thought on the relationship of the middle class with society, the economy and the state during the colonial, post-colonial and current eras. It investigates the middle class' complex role in political democracy and governance by examining how it interacts with the state, influences the market, and dominates political articulations and social relationships.The volume also focuses specifically on the social, political and economic articulation of the middle class with regard to historically marginalized social groups such as the Dalits, the tribal communities, and the religious minorities.This book will be of interest to economists, political scientists, sociologists, social anthropologists and historians, as well as to specialists in current affairs.

This volume is a collection of eighteen ethnographic essays on Anthropological Explorations in East and South-East Asia, reprinted from Journal of the Anthropological Society of Bombay, published during 1886–1936. Divided into five parts, it includes works on history, religion, tea cult, the Torii of Japan and the Torans of India; on the veneration of the dead in China; on Tibet and its customs and practices, the Lamas and folklore in eastern Himalayas; on the monastic institution of Burma and its Phongys; Malay folklore, folk medicine, etiological folktales; and Burmese and Indian folk beliefs. This volume provides evidence that the history of anthropological writings in India is much older than is believed to be. This volume bears witness to indigenous scholarship of civilized societies such as China, Burma, Tibet and Japan. This volume will be beneficial for the study of the impact of Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism and Hinduism in East and South-East Asia.

This book provides a socio-psychological enquiry of the phenomenon of suicide in the Indian context. It addresses the rising trend of suicides across the world and through case studies explores its primary reasons, the after-effects on survivors and families, and measures to prevent them

At the Census of India, 1881, the former princely state of Baroda published data for every village and town, called Dehzado. After presenting the general demography of Baroda state, this article presents an analysis of data on caste, tribe and religion. It provides classification of villages and towns by the number of castes and tribes found in them, and discusses the issues posed by them, especially the issue of single-caste villages. This article describes the horizontal spread of various castes, tribes and religious minorities and points out its implications. In the end, it discusses the problem of urbanisation, classifying the towns by ethnic groups found in them.