S.C. Dube's classic work The Kamar was written at a crucial juncture in Indian history - the end of colonial rule and the arrival of Indian independence. It is an important ethnography o an exploited and marginalized tribe in transition and a formative text in the history of Indian anthropology. Based on careful fieldwork and enlivened by ethnographic sensitivity related to the author's long familiarity with region and subject, the study presents a pioneering portrait of the Kamar, an adivasi community of hunter-gatherers and shifting-cultivators of Chhattisgarh and Orissa. Combining brevity of style, economy of expression, and simplicity of structure, in the book, Dube discusses key themes in anthropology and sociology: economic life, social organization, and customary law, myth, legend and ritual; religion, magic, and witchcraft; and questions of 'cultural contact' and 'tribal adjustment'.
