ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces and reviews the condition of a variety of nomadic communities in South Asia whose members travel among villages and towns, selling or exchanging goods they make, buying and reselling other goods, or offering specialized skills and services. In return they are compensated in cash or in kind. Such communities—called commercial nomads, service nomads, symbiotic nomads, nonfood-producing nomads, and, increasingly, peripatetics—inhabit most parts of the world. Nomadism is understood as regular, usually seasonal movement; the sale of goods and services amounts to a kind of resource exploitation, the resource here being customers with purchasing power (rather than the grazing grounds we associate with pastoral nomads).
