Table of contents

The Andaman And Nicobar Islands Are Undoubtedly One Of The Very Few Places In The World Today, Where Man Has So Far Survived In His Original Form And Manners. The Isolation And Remoteness Of The Islands Have Made The Tribal Situation A Subject Of Challenge And Interest To Social Workers, Social Scientists And Anthropologists.The Objective Of The Book Is To Give Momentum To Slow And Steady Growth Of Tribal Welfare And Development In The Andaman And Nicobar Islands. It Contains Six Papers From Various Anthropologists. The Papers Based On Applied In Nature And Contents Directly Or Indirectly Are Conducive To The Uplift Of Tribes Of Andaman And Nicobar Islands. In View Of Its Multi Disciplinary In Nature, The Book, Which Is First Of Its Kind, Would Be Of Immense Help And Use To General Readers, Academicians, Sociologist, Social Workers, Demographers And Anthropologists.

There are always at least two 'histories' of encounter or contact, as each party would tell the story differently, but where and when is it really the 'first contact' and for whom? This book deploys an analytical framework developed from Semiotics to have both sides of the story address each other. It is ethnography of dialogue, emerging from textual representation by outsiders and its relationship to visual response and presentations by the Andaman Islanders that this book aims to present as the critical 'ethnography of history.' The section on Visuality looks at how the 'Other' is incorporated into an organized knowledge-system, including Ongee myths and songs about outsiders and the early photographs of tribal people by British settlers and ethnographers. The section on Materiality concerns the investment in things made, to influence natural processes or to distinguish the human body, and discusses how they are transacted between cultures that come into contact. The concluding section on history addresses encounters and developments in which the experiences of both tribal and settler are implicated more thoroughly than in the transaction of objects. Thus juxtaposing alternative perspectives on change indicates areas of experience unaccounted for in the dominant discourse and shows the provisionality of images.