Scarcity and Survival: A Study in Culture Ecology of Chowra Island in Nicobar Archipelago

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The Island of Chowra, very small in size (2.8 km), has a population of 1400 people which works out to 500 persons per square mile, the highest both in Andaman and Nicobar groups of islands. Despite these two factors the Chowra Island has an important position in the Nicobar Archipelago. It controls the entire inter-island trade in the Nicobar group of islands. The author examines how with very limited resources and high density of population the Island carries on a lucrative traffic and is thus able to sustain its population which is not small considering the size of the island. Rejecting the unscientific explanation that the Chowra Island lorded over the islands of the Nicobar Archipelago by their skill in witchcraft and sorcery, the author attempts to find the correct answer by undertaking a scientific inquiry into the cultural ecology of the islanders. To do so he examines, first of all, the pattern of community life. The author's inquiry reveals that the social structure of the Chowra Island is flexible enough to allow the islanders to be highly adaptive, and the two constraints scarcity and high density of population-do not act as a drag on their economic activity. Further inquiry makes it amply clear that both religious and political institutions of the island are all geared to the acquisition, utilization and regulation of resources.

The author's conclusions are based on his intensive field-work on the Island of Chowra, where he spent nearly one year. A valuable contribution to the discipline of cultural anthropology, the book is rich in data and precise in its articulation of analysis.

A Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Andhra, Dr. G.P. Reddy (b.1940) has done many important research works, and his research papers, published in reputed journals, have been appreciated by specialists. Many of his village studies and monographs such as the Chenchus, Lambadas have been issued by the Office of the Registrar General, New Delhi. On various occasions Dr Reddy had been associated with the many research investigations of the Census of India and Office of Registrar General India. Dr Reddy's assistance was also sought by Indo-American Population Project, Madak District, Andhra Pradesh.

Ecological approach in Anthropological studies is a recent phenomenon. Other approaches which have been popular in the discipline of Anthropology are 1) ideological and 2) structural. The ideological approach is associated with Boas and his students who emphasised not only human cultures as a whole but individual cultures as well. They concentrated on a common ideological reality shared by the members of a society. This ideology resided in the minds of the people as passed on from generation to generation. The ideological approach facilitates in giving excellent descriptions of culture stressing unity of the group over the individual differences and norms specifying what should be rather than what is real. However, the main drawback of this approach is that the formation of actual values and shared belief were vague and cannot be put to empirical test, often the reality was quite different from the ideal (Netting, 1972).

The structural approach, on the other hand, was less con- cerned about total configuration of cultures but focused on the functional integration of institutions which supported and maintained the society. Radcliffe-Brown, Mayer Fortes, et. al., were the exponents of this tradition in Anthropology. The structural approach though proved quite popular in Anthropological studies has its own inherent drawbacks. The most important one is that the structural approach is not flexible enough to allow explanations about social change and variation in individual behaviour.

Growing dissatisfaction with the ideological and structural approaches in Anthropological studies leads to adoption of eco- logical interpretation of culture. However, it should be noted here that ecological approach to culture is not a polemic opposite of ideological and structural approaches. Ecological approach or cultural ecology is a new dimension added to the already known facts about cultural values, beliefs and the structural principles governing the institutions of a society.

The term "ecology" is defined as "the science of inter- relation between living organisms and their environment, including both the physical and the biotic environments, and emphasising interspecies as well as intraspecies relations." (Allee, 1949: 1) According to the definition of the term "ecology" ecological studies should be considered as biological in scope rather than social. But according to Steward (1955: 32) it is that ecological study deals with 1) biological phenomena and 2) cultural phenomena, and each type requires a separate set of tools and techniques because the cultural patterns are not genetically derived and therefore cannot be analysed in the same way as organic features. This means that the methodology involved in the study of adjustment or organisms to environment is different from the methodology to study the adjustment of culture to environment.

According to Sahlins any society has to cope up with two different influences 1) Cultural influence and 2) Natural influence thereby generating two adaptations, cultural and natural. His approach is basically evolutionary in nature and views biological ecology and cultural ecology as not two separate entities, but rather as complementary to each other (1964).

**Contents and Sample Pages**