Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in World System Perspective

Abstract

Experiences during the post-second world war period show that capitalism per se is unable to overcome the growing contradiction between its economic management in an increasingly globalized space and its political and social management which remain fragmental among national space. This impasse can be dialectically used to move beyond power-oriented system in the management of world affairs and initiate the process of its replacement by componionate value based egalitarian justice system. In this task of world reconstruction history’s mantle has devolved on the indiginous people defined in normative sense, rather than chronological and relational sense. While in ideal typical cognitive realm, tribe as a social category can also be considered to be indigenous in the normative sense, two contradictory processess are taking place in the contemporary world situation. On the one hand the ‘indigenous’ world-view of ethical engagement with fellow human beings and also with the animate and inanimate endowments of nature is encompassing many collectivities who do not identify themselves or are identified by others as tribal peoples, on the other while a number of policy, documents at the national and international levels are reinforcing the traditional identity markers of the recognised tribal entities, some of these documents are diluting their indigencity in the normative sense. The paper discusses several aspects of the contradictory processes.