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- Hunting-gathering has been largely defined in economic terms. It is regarded as chiefly a mode of subsistence based on hunting wild animals, gathering wild plants and fishing with no domesticated plants or animals except dog. However the contemporary hunter-gatherers also depend upon other subsistence modes like gardening, herding and trading in forest produce etc.
- On the other hand, defining hunter-gatherers also depend upon social organization, cosmology and world view in view of the fact that these aspects form an integral part of the hunting-gathering mode of subsistence. In a majority of hunter-gatherers populations, the band or a local group form the basic unit of social organization. This group comprises 15-50 people related by kinship and usually occupy a territory which is gleaned for food. The band organization is characterized by egalitarianism, mobility, fission, fusion and a communal ownership of land just as common property regime. However these features are not universal.
- Regarding interpersonal relations, sharing in the form of generalized reciprocity (giving something without an expectation of a return) play a very significant role that binds the group together. Even though the family constitutes a production and consumption unit, it is often cooperation and collective action, of small groups of persons through which food is procured and distributed.
- Hunter-gatherers identity is closely tied to ontological relation in which supernatural beings become a part of their kindred group. Animals are considered as kin, dissolving the ontological boundaries between the hunter-gatherers and animals. There is a distinctive spirit and attitude towards their environment which BirdDavid (1990) phrased as ‘giving environment’ where it is conceptualized as a home of spirits and source of all good things. In their conception, the cosmic world is animated with moral and mystical forces.
- The major controversy in defining hunter-gatherers is a certain ethnocentric conceptualization that they are “pure”, “original” and “isolated without any contact with outsiders”. However several studies have conclusively proved that it was not so. The problem is too much emphasis on subsistence pattern and neglecting other features. Even in features like social organization, world-view, sociality etc. differences are seen.