Publisher's Synopsis
As one of its significant programmes, the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) has, for sometime, focussed on the lifestyle studies addressing the fundamental questions concerning Man's relationship with Cosmic Order, his perceptions of Space and Time through the ages and across cultures, and his experience of Nature and how far he has evolved a symbiotic 'existential connection' with it. The IGNCA has now launched forth a series of 'Pilot Studies' which, through specific community studies, seeks to explore culture-ecology interrelationship in its myriad manifestations. Lifestyles and Ecology is the series' first thematic monograph. With meticulous analyses of the lifestyles of the Himalayan pastoral nomads, the Lakshadweep islanders, and Kanyakumari's Mukkuvar fisherfolk, among others, the studies here show how these communities follow the spirit of the natural world: not in imitation, but in continuation of the primal vision. Delineating, thus, variegated cultural paradigms of these communities, with details like, for instance, of their belief systems, myths, rituals, folklore, songs, and their knowledge of cosmology as well as natural phenomena, the authors underscore the inseparability of nature and culture in the lived experience of traditional societies the world over. The book also carries a brilliant overview of ecology vis-a-vis traditional resource management systems. The authors are ecologists, anthropologists and folklorists of wide repute. AUTHOR DETAILS: Baidyanath Saraswati, an anthropologist of international eminence, is Unesco-Professor at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, New Delhi. And is former Professor of Anthropology at the North-Eastern Hill University; Fellow of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study; and Visiting Professor at the universities of Ranchi and Visva-Bharati. Professor Saraswati's published work comprises a number of books and monographs, among which notably figure Pottery-making Cultures and Indian Civilization; Brahmanic Ritual Traditions; Kashi: Myth and Reality; and Spectrum of the Sacred besides his edited titles, like Tribal Thought and Culture; Prakrti: Primal Elements the Oral Tradition; Prakrti: Man in Nature; Computerizing Cultures; Cross-Cultural Lifestyle Studies; Cultural Dimension of Education and Cultural Dimension of Ecology.
