Identity, gender, and poverty
Subtitle: new perspectives on caste  nd tribe in Rajasthan
By: Maya Unnithan-Kumar.
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Published: 1997
Place of publication: Providence
Language: eng
Number of pages: 291
Subjects: Grasia (Indic people); Women, Grasia; Caste -- India; India -- Scheduled tribes
Description: Most studies of the so called tribal communities in India stress their social, economic, and political differences from communities that are organised on the basis of caste. It was this apparent contrast between tribal and the caste lifestyle and, moreover, the paucity of material on tribal groups, that motivated the author to undertake this study of a poor "tribal" community, the Girasia, in northwestern India.

While doing her fieldwork, she soon became aware that the traditional tribe-caste categories needed to be revised; in fact, she found them more often that not to be constructs by outsiders, mostly academic. Of greater importance for an understanding of the Girasia is the wider and more complex issue of self-perception and identification by others, which must be seen in the context of their poverty as well as in the strategic and shifting use of kinship, gender and class relations in the region.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 274-288) and index.