About the Book : Ethnography, the backbone of social anthropology, enjoys privileged position in social science research. But often it suffers from inadequate theoretical framework, and the current shift to post modern writing on culture demands f treatment hitherto different from that of the classical kind. This book carefully considers the two requirements; it provides the ongoing theoretical debates on south Indian kinship and social organistion as also on ethnography which allows the reader to examine the facts against various theoretical perspectives. The ethnography here concerns with the life of Yanadi, a scheduled tribe inhabiting Sriharikota island. It must e pointed out that there is no dearth of ethnographic literature on South Indian tribes and castes but certainly there is scarcity of material no nomadic tribes. The medieval history reveals a number of roving tribes which eventually settled down and assumed act status. But their social structural features and their transformations largely remain unknown. The attempts made here fill this gap to some extent. Further, as it deals with the kinship and social organization of a Dravidian tribe it is an addition to the existing classical anthropological literature on south Indian social organisations. About Author : N. Sudhakar Rao is a Professor retired from the Department of Anthropology, at the University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad. He is an alumnus of S.V.U., Tirupati, University, University of Hyderabad, and completed his MA (Anthropology) and Ph.D. (Anthropology) from the University of Rochester, USA. He was a J.R. Fellow of AIIS, Chicago, and a Visiting Research Fellow at CDS, Dept., of Anthropology, University of Bergen, Norway. Served for the Indian Institute of Economics, Hyderabad, ISRO, National Commission for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, and also served Assam Central University, Silchar, as Professor of Sociology, and Dean, School of Social Sciences, and as Registrar. He published four books and several papers in reputed academic journals.