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The concept of tribe with special reference to India

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

André Béteille
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Extract

Anthropologists have been from the very beginning engaged in the study of tribes, and it is in somesense to this study that their discipline owes its distinctive identity. When historians, political theorists, sociologists and others have to deal with tribes, they turn to anthropologists for expert opinion on what tribes are and how they are constituted. In some countries what constitutes a tribe is of concern also to administrators and policy makers, and they too expect advice and guidance from anthropologists. Yet it cannot be said that anthropologists are themselves in agreement about the concept, and their disagreement is, if anything, even larger today than it was in the past.

Type
Vin Nouveau, Vieilles Outres
Information
European Journal of Sociology / Archives Européennes de Sociologie , Volume 27 , Issue 2 , November 1986 , pp. 296 - 318
Copyright
Copyright © Archives Européenes de Sociology 1986

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References

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(14) Sahlins makes no reference to Durkheim's work in his fiist paper although the omission is made good in his book published seven years later. See n. 10.

(15) See Gellner, E., Saints of the Atlas (London, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1969)Google Scholar; also his Muslim Society (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1981)Google Scholar. The pioneering anthropological work is Evans-Pritchard, E.E., The Sanusi of Cyrenaica (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1949)Google Scholar.

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(21) Ibid. p. 87. This argument, as indeed Godelier's whole approach, leansheavily on Engels.

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(23) See Digard, J.-P., On the Bakhtiari, in Tapper, R. (ed.), The Conflict of Tribe and State in Iran and Afghanistan (London, Croom-Helm, 1983), pp. 331–336Google Scholar. Digard, asks, ‘Morevover, how can it be maintained that a segmentary structure is inherently contradictory with a class structure, when, as a matter of fact, these two forms of organization co-exist and “function” simultaneously in several societies, including the Bakhtiari?’ (p. 332)Google Scholar.

(24) Fortes and Evans-Pritchard, op. cit. n. 12, p. 8.

(25) Bose, Tribal Life in India, n. 7.

(26) Burman, B.K. Roy, Transformation of tribes and analogous social formations, Economic and Political Weekly, XVIII, no. 27, 2 07 1983, 1172–74Google Scholar; see also his ‘The post-primitives of Chota Nagpur’ in UNESCO, Trends in Ethnic Group Relations in Asia and Oceania (Paris, UNESCO, 1979), pp. 102–141Google Scholar.

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(29) Fried, op. cit. n. 27, chap. 2.

(30) Writing about the Kamar and the Gond who have close cultural affiliations, Füfer-Haimendorf observed in 1951, ‘The Kamars consider the Gonds as their social superiors, but nevertheless they do not countenance unrestricted social intercourse with their Gond neighbours. Sexual relations with a Gond is sufficient ground for excommunication and a woman who eats food cooked by Gonds is at onceexpelled from the tribal community. A man, on the other hand, may eat Gond food, but Kamars and Gonds do not freely intermingle at feasts and ceremonies’. (von Fcrer-Haimendorf, C., Foreword, in Dube, S.C., The Kamar (Lucknow, Universal Publishers, 1951), p. v)Google Scholar.

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(32) Trautman, T., Dravidian Kinship (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1981)Google Scholar.

(33) On this, however, there is some difference of opinion. See, for instance, the three-part article by Dumont, L., Marriage in India: the present state of the question, Contributions to Indian Sociology; nos. 5 (1961), 7 (1964) and 9 (1966)Google Scholar.

(34) Evans-Pritchard, The Nuer, op. cit. n. 12, chap. 4.

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(39) The most illuminating contemporary discussion is in Gellner, Muslim Society, op. cit. n. 15; see also his Saints of the Atlas, op. cit. n. 15.

(40) D. Brooks, The enemy within: limitations on leadership in the Bakhtiari, in , Tapper (ed.), op. cit. n. 23, p. 338Google Scholar.

(41) This remark is controversial, but here I follow Kosambi, D.D., An Introduction to the Study of Indian History (Bombay, Popular Prakashan, 1956)Google Scholar, especially chap. 1.

(42) Ray, Niharranjan, Nationalism in India (Aligarh, Aligarh Muslim University, 1973)Google Scholar; Bose, Tribal Life in India, n. 7.

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(48) Among the better known are Risley, H.H., The Tribes and Castes of Bengal, 2 vols. (Calcutta, Bengal Secretariat Press, 1892)Google Scholar; Thurston, E., Castes and Tribes of Southern India, 7 vols. (Madras, Government Press, 1909)Google Scholar; Crooke, W., The Tribes and Castes of theNorth-Western Provinces and Oudh, 4 vols. (Calcutta 1896)Google Scholar; Entho-Ven, R.E., The Tribes and Castes of Bombay, 3 vols. (Bombay, Government Central Press, 1920–1922)Google Scholar.

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(50) Habib, I., ‘Caste in Indian History’, being the first of two Kosambi MemorialLectures delivered in Bombay in 02 1985Google Scholar, ms.

(51) Ibid. p. 12.

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(53) Bose, The Structure of Hindu Society, op. cit. n. 4.

(54) For a recent description of the melange of tribes and castes in Assam see Cantlie, A., The Assamese (Philadelphia, Curzon Press, 1984)Google Scholar. On the Khasi, see Gurdon, P.R.T., The Khasis (London, Macmillan, 1914)Google Scholar, and, for a more recent work, Bareh, H., History and Culture of the Khasi People(published by the author: Calcutta 1967)Google Scholar.

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(56) Colson, , The Makah Indians, op. cit. n. 36, p. 11Google Scholar.

(57) Ibid. p. 1.

(58) Roy Burman, Transformation of tribes and analogous social formations, n. 26.

(59) Burman, Roy, The post-primitives, loc. cit. n. 26, p. 112Google Scholar.

(60) Ghurye, G.S., The Scheduled Tribes (Bombay, Popular Book Depot, 1959)Google Scholar.

(61) Tapper, R., Introduction, in , Tapper (ed.), op. cit. n. 23, pp. 46–7Google Scholar.

(62) On this see Singh, Tribal Society in India, op. cit, especially chap. 6.

(63) Ghurye, op. cit. n. 59, articulates the nationalist point of view forcefully.

(64) For a succinct account of the Constitutional position, see Galanter, M., Competing Equalities (New York, Oxford University Press, 1984), pp. 147–53Google Scholar.

(65) This case is described in Singh, , op. cit. n. 4, p. 80Google Scholar.

(66) Béteille, A., Individualism and the Persistence of Collective Identities (Colchester, University of Essex, 1984)Google Scholar.