While many contemporary studies observe modernization in the Global South, few have centered tribal groups. The Pahadi Korwa tribe in Surguja district, Chhattisgarh, India, is one such historically isolated group that has recently shifted from their grandparents' hunter-gatherer lifestyle to agriculture and informal wage labor. This economic shift brings changes in social relationships, understandings of wealth and inequality, and a growing awareness of one's place along a spectrum of lifestyles connotated with social and cultural meaning at individual and national levels: a process referred to here as 'modernization'. This study seeks to understand how the Korwa tribe's identity – a sense of self formed by social relationships – is embedded in modernization, by observing three interactive aspects of how modernization shapes Korwa identities. Firstly, as lifestyles shift, Korwa tribe members draw boundaries to distinguish and distance themselves from other Korwa, both past and present, based on lifestyle, literacy, or social values – indicators of modernization. Such boundaries alter social realities and can create conflict within the tribe, as differences in the adoption of these indicators become sources of tension. Because these boundaries are often drawn in response to how one is perceived by others, the second section examines how Korwa identities are formed through recognition by others, particularly landowners, within observed social hierarchies. Interviews with landowners (primarily the Yadav group) and their interactions with tribe members reveal that Korwa identities are shaped through a language of modernization: landowners often frame Korwa tribe members on a pendulum ranging from jungli (wild) or poor to its complementary, progressing. This pendulum illustrates how landowners shift their framing depending on their own aspirations for social mobility, their self-perception as helpers of the tribe, or their desire to demonstrate 'progress' to outsiders – factors illustrating that landowners themselves have identities embedded in modernization experienced relationally to the tribe. Thus, the landowner's pendulum-like framing ties how tribe members are recognized to modernization indefinitely. Finally, we observe that in embodying these modernization-coded identities, Korwa tribe members act as agents to achieve mobility, ultimately reproducing such identities. This study shows how, in decades, shifting relationships have made a historically isolated group's identities shaped by modernization.
Lisa Raj Singh (Sun,) studied this question.