Ecology, Culture and Human Development: Lessons for Adivasi Education

The key to the upliftment of the Adivasi community is a deep understanding of their culture, psychological resources and cognitive strengths. Ecology, Culture and Human Development: Lessons for Adivasi Education presents a comparative analysis of the cultural and cognitive dimensions of various communities in Canada, Ghana, China and India, and seeks answers from this analysis for Adivasi education.  It debunks the myths of low intelligence and inferior cognitive capacity of the Adivasi community, and emphasizes the remarkable performance of Adivasi children when assessed in terms of their ecological and cultural contexts. 

Extensively illustrated and containing substantive data on all relevant aspects of human development, this book is a much-desired addition to the literature on this crucial aspect of social development in India. It is a comprehensive resource that aims to contribute substantially towards mitigating the travails of the Adivasi community and ensuring their social empowerment.

Ramesh C. Mishra (DPhil, University of Allahabad) is Professor Emeritus of psychology at Banaras Hindu University, India. He has been a post Doctoral research fellow and Shastri Research Fellow at Queen’s University, Canada, and a visiting professor at the Universities of Konstanz (Germany) and Geneva (Switzerland). He has also been a Fellow-in-Residence of the Netherlands Institute of Advanced Study, Wassenaar (The Netherlands) and a Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence at Wittenberg University, Springfield (USA). He is the Past President and Fellow of the National Academy of Psychology (India). His research is focused on understanding ecological and cultural influences on human development. He is the co-author of Ecology, Acculturation and Psychological Adaptation: A Study of Adivasis in Bihar (SAGE) and Development of Geocentric Spatial Language and Cognition: An Ecocultural Perspective and co-editor of Psychology in Human and Social Development: Lessons from Diverse Cultures (SAGE).

John W. Berry (PhD, University of Edinburgh) is Professor Emeritus of psychology at Queen’s University, Canada, and Research Professor, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia. He received honorary doctorates from the University of Athens and Université de Geneve (in 2001). He has published over 30 books in the areas of cross-cultural, intercultural, social and cognitive psychology with various colleagues. He is a Fellow of the Canadian Psychological Association, the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study, the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology and the International Academy for Intercultural Research. He received the Hebb Award for Contributions to Psychology as a Science in 1999, the award for Contributions to the Advancement of International Psychology in 2012 (from CPA), the Interamerican Psychology Award from the Sociedad Interamericana de Psicologia (in 2001) and the Lifetime Contribution Award from IAIR (in 2005). His main research interests are in the role of ecology and culture in human development and in acculturation and intercultural relations, with an emphasis on applications to immigration, multiculturalism, educational and health policy.