Social Construction of Tribal Health: Maternal and Child Wellbeing among Selected Tribals in South India

Abstract

Health of the individual is embedded with society’s wellbeing. In the case of Tribal community, health status of inhabitants is the question of their existence and survival.  One needs a dynamic framework to understand tribal health and its engagement with different forms of functioning where the tribal are constantly told what to eat, what and how to cook for children, why to weigh the child every month in the Aanganwdi center, the need to vaccinate, to deliver in the hospital, to pop a pill when having fever etc. These health messages are not merely about personal health but a moral imperative for a good citizen via a good parent. By identifying health as a repercussion of socio - cultural - ecological and biological whereabouts of a society, present study has adopted a sociological methodology to deal with socio-cultural construction of health amongst the Hill Tribes, particularly the Kurumba and Irula of Attappadi tribal block in Kerala state, India.