This question have so many answers like quantity of people, wich feel himself touch from it. Maybe first thing, wich come in my head (clarification - I'm not an anthropologist, I only have strong interest about this science and my opinion will not be not profesional): Underdevelopment is lack of development. Next question is: What kind of underdevelopment we talking about? And what kind of development we going to, perceive ourself like civilized poeple? I remember how John Blacktorn perceive japanese people like underdevelopment people, when he met them first time (James Clavell - "Shōgun", 1975). My opinion is that there is no universal underdevelopment. Underdevelopment is comparative category. There is underdevelopmen as regards to some thing uder, wich someone perceive like cultured. Maybe some people, wich we perceive like underdevelopment don't have need from our culture and understanding of development. This is my philosophical understanding of underdevelopment.

Is it possible to measure "development" and "underdevelopment"? You first need a more precise concept that covers the commonsense meanings of these terms. One concept that is more precise while covering virtually all elements of "development" is cognitive development, cognitive complexity, or intelligence. The varimax-rotated first principal component of Murdoch and Provost's classical study of cultural complexity in the standard cross-cultural sample is really describes the ways in which cognitive complexity of individuals is transformed into cultural complexity of the society. Different authors conceptualize this in different ways. For example, Georg Oesterdiekhoff insists that cultural differences in cognitive complexity need to be conceptualized as Piagetian stage progression, with "primitive tribes" being stuck somewhere on the preoperational or early concrete operational stage, with formal operations developed only as a result of formal schooling. And this really is the essence of development. You send children to school, expose them to situations where they have to solve problems using their brains, including the use of abstract concepts which are the hallmark of the formal operational stage. Most psychometricians dispute the usefulness of the Piagetian approach, preferring to measure IQs instead. Sure enough, members of primitive tribes score abysmally on IQ tests, but once children are sent to decent schools and people are exposed to the complexities of life in a modern society, IQ shoots up. The last stage in the development of modern societies is marked by the "Flynn effect", which describes the massive rise of intelligence during the last century. Too bad that IQ tests were invented only around 1900, and that we have no time machines to administer our IQ tests and Piagetian tests to people who lived hundreds or thousands of years ago. The rest of "development" is mainly a consequence of higher intelligence.

Usualy in anthropology we speak about physical developement and it can be objectiveley measured by anthropometrics. There are set tables of physical developement showing milestones for different ages.Tables also showing normal deviations as well as the pathological diviation of the developement.

With regards to mental development- there is also a different key indicators and milestones that should by reached by the individ and these are used by pedagogists and psychologist in assessing mental development, also by biological anthropologist with regard to human etology and different behavioural models.

Criteria for physical development are periodicaly changing as some environmental and socioeconomic factors are directly related to it, such as crisis, war, economic growth - acceleration etc. Same thing is valid for mental and cognitive development.

Of course when assessing development social status and environment should be taken in to consideration.

So i think we have in place tools to measure development, most of them provided by anthropological reaserch and lately used by different science.

With regard to the exact study i woud use standart development scales for comparation with the tribe to evaluate the level of underdevelopment compare to certain society , off course caused by the limitation of their live style.

In this case also the physical development would be interesting as well as the frequency of genetic disease , considering the reproduction in a closed group.

A concept of "underdevelopment" presumes a concept of "development," which is normally provided by anthropologists and others who enjoy the privileges of life in wealthy, technologically sophisticate and mainly Western societies. They tend to regard development as desirable and underdevelopment as undesirable. They tend to measure development by a variety of empirical scales with quantify personal incomes, levels of formal education, proportion of employees in professional or high technology occupations as opposed, for example, to agriculture and resource extraction, the percentage of the population with specified objects such as televisions and personal computers, infant mortality rates and overall life expectancy, the number of private automobiles per capita, etc., etc., etc.

It goes (or should go) without saying that these standards (while countable and therefore in some sense "objective") are imbued with social norms and values. Seldom is attention paid, for instance, to the rates of air, water and soil pollution, criminal incarceration, drug addiction and capital punishment or to the availability of public health insurance or public transit, , etc., etc. As a result, the definition of development is essentially a reification of conditions in the United States of America which holds itself up (and is held up by many others) as the "gold standard" of modernity and social, economic and political "development.

Moreover, even those who are highly critical of such matters as imperialism and who regard the USA as the principal imperial power in the world today, still take development as understood by American apologists pretty much at face value. Their criticisms, therefore, generally focus on what they may call "distorted" development or "exploitation" which result in the inability of poor countries to enjoy the personal wealth and other amenities that Americans (and Western Europeans and others) take for granted.

Development has been taken from biology and used wrongly. Therefore we are suffering the consequences of our own creation: underdevelopment a category which I don't accept. The correct word is generating richness and rich communities.

Development is a term used in biology. It is also a term used in anthropology, political science and economics. It is associated with evolution which can mean an organic or an inorganic form of progression, usually in a logical if not a predetermined direction.

It may involve economic "progress" as in W. W. Rostow's notion of "stages of economic growth" (a prime justification/excuse for US involvement in Vietnam and other misadventures).

It is not, however, correctly used for "generating richness and rich communities." That may be your particular slant, but insofar as it is associated with economic growth, I'd prefer to have it connected to concepts such as equity, sustainability and overall quality of life.

Meanwhile, I'll just suggest that if "development" is geared to generating material wealth, then it may be sociopathic and/or suicidal since what we call wealth is the main source of ecological degradation.

I think we have been working with the Eurocentric conception of development and underdevelopment, measured often in terms of socio-economic indices ascribed to the techonologically advanced countries of the world. An anthropological view of underdevelopment will depend largely on the anthropological tradition one subscribes to. For instance, a Marxist anthropologist is likely to see underdevelopment as the result of disruption of the economic evolution of societies. There are othoer cultural schools of devt/underdevelopment.

You are quite right in saying that "we have been working with a Eurocentric conception of development." That is, of course, understandable since the notions are endemic to the "progressive" ideology of post-Enlightenment Europeans - whether "Capitalist," "corporatist," "Marxist," or what you will. The Eurocentric approach also allows for concepts of "distorted development" (cf. Wallerstein, Gunder Frank, etc.).

We should also question whether the whole notion of development is still viable (cf. John McMurtry's "The Cancer Stage of Capitalism" or the literature of the "environmental movement" all the way back to the Meadows' "The Limits to Growth," or even back to Malthus).

And we should be vigilant about the use of phrases such as "sustainable development." As John Livingston said about 25 years ago in a lecture at York University in Toronto: "Whenever you hear the phrase 'sustainable development,' you can be sure that it is development that is going to be sustained." (See also his splendid book, "Rogue Primate" (Toronto: Key Porter Books, 1993).

Thanks everyone for comments and suggestions. I am looking forward to integrate your ideas in my research.