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Long Abstract
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The recent trends in subaltern studies provides a powerful and innovative revision. The term subaltern describes the lower social classes. A subaltern is someone with a low ranking in a social, political, or other hierarchy. Ranajit Guha used the concept 'subaltern' to signify anyone who did not belong to the elite. Marginality is the position of people on the edges, preventing their access to resources, opportunities and freedom of choices. Thes two categories of people are not understood in a distinctive manner by various scholars and their writings from various fields. In economics marginality is understood as having to do withenterprize that produce good or are capable of producing goods at a rate barely covers production costs. In psychology this concept is relating to or locatedat the fringe of consciousness. However the approaches of Anthropology since it is wholistic in its approach can make a substantive clarity and contribution with regard to these categories. So there is a need for indepth stuides of various classes and communities across the globe. For instane, the dalits, tribes, transgenders, nomads etc. have to be studied thoroughly. While making the ethnographic studies on them their expressive forms such as arts, folklore , performances are also are taken into consideration.The ideas of Antonio Gramsci, Gayathri Spivak should be thoroughly examined and applied in these kinds of studies. For instance Gramsci's concept of subaltern is very mich similar to Levi-Strauss;s conception of bricoleur. In addition to thes, forr the appropriate understanding the application of concept of ' culture of poverty' by Oscar Lewis would be definitely useful. There has been a significant progress in the reduction of poverty in the developing world over the past few decades. Whether this has had any influence on the understanding of these two concepts are to be probed.
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