REVISITING TRIBAL STUDIES: A Glimpse After Hundred Years

Tribal studies have been a critical area of enquiry, starting from colonial requirements to contemporary interest of government organizations and NGOs, anthropo-sociological adoption to cross disciplinary recognition, culture and ethnography to multidisciplinary methodological perspectives, academic pursuits to project-induced necessity of evaluation and assessment and from depicting tribes as ‘others’ to integrating them in nation-building.
The emerging trend reflects on perspective shifts and expansions through essays included in this book, thus mapping multi-dimensional growth of knowledge over a wide range of topical issues on the subject over a period of more than a century. Precisely, the volume is a pioneering attempt to locate whither tribal studies through collection of essays from scholars of diverse background.
This volume undoubtedly will be of interest to scholars and students across disciplines. Administrators, policy makers, rights activists and all those interested to know the process of expansion and institutionalization of knowledge on tribal studies in India will also find it useful.

M.C. Behera has been pursuing researches on Tribal Studies and Rural Economics since eighties. He has authored, edited and co-edited thirty volumes on socio-economic and cultural life of tribal and rural people from diverse theoretical and empirical perspectives. To his credit, he has about sixty-five research papers published in various national and international journals and periodicals. He has presented about sixty papers in national and international seminars and conferences in the country and abroad. He is a member of many professional bodies. Dr Behera was a Professor of Indigenous Culture Studies and Dean School of Cultural Studies, Central University of Jharkhand before he joined as Director, Arunachal Institute of Tribal Studies, Rajiv Gandhi University, Itanagar, Arunachal Pradesh.