Sharing, hoarding, and theft: Exchange and resistance in forager-farmer relations

South Asian foragers (a.k.a. scheduled tribes and adivasi) have been depict ed as passive, primitive, and naive in their relations with surrounding sed entary populations of agriculturalists. Researchers' accounts can inadverte ntly promote such tribal essentialism when they focus on simple reciprocity and sharing behavior and neglect the range of other strategies that enable foragers to resist assimilation into the underclasses of Hindu society. Re cent ethnographic research about exchange patterns among the nomadic Raute of western Nepal indicates that their productive strategy combines spread-n et and ax hunting of monkeys, collection of forest vegetables, and barter f or grain and other products. Although their internal social relations stres s egalitarian sharing, Raute emphasize asymmetrical exchange strategies suc h as patronage, fictive kinship, and begging from surrounding Hindu agropas toralists. These flexible strategies of interethnic exchange enable the Rau te to maintain a degree of ethnic autonomy that has been lost by other Sout h Asian foragers. (Hunter-gatherers, South Asia, exchange theory, forager e conomics, cultural survival).