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Gananath Obeyesekere
Born
Gananath Obeyesekere

(1930-02-02) 2 February 1930 (age 94)
Sri Lanka
EducationUniversity of Peradeniya (BA)
University of Washington (MA;PhD)
Occupation(s)professor, anthropologist, author
Scientific career
FieldsAnthropology
InstitutionsPrinceton University (1980-2000)
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Gananath Obeyesekere is Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University and has done much work in his home country of Sri Lanka. His research focuses on psychoanalysis and anthropology and the ways in which personal symbolism is related to religious experience, in addition to the European exploration of Polynesia in the 18th century and after, and the implications of these voyages for the development of ethnography.[1] His books include Land Tenure in Village Ceylon, Medusa's Hair,[2] The Cult of the Goddess Pattini,[3] Buddhism Transformed (coauthor), The Work of Culture, The Apotheosis of Captain Cook: European Mythmaking in the Pacific, and Making Karma.

Career

Professor Obeyesekere completed a B.A. in English (1955) at the University of Ceylon, Peradeniya, followed by an M.A. (1958) and Ph.D (1964) at the University of Washington. Before his appointment to Princeton, Obeyesekere held teaching positions at the University of Ceylon, the University of Washington and the University of California, San Diego. He was Chair of the Princeton University Anthropology Department and a Professor from 1980 to the year 2000 when he retired. He has received several academic awards, the most recent being the Thomas H. Huxley medal by the Royal Anthropological Institute in recognition of his scholarly contributions to the discipline.

Debate with Sahlins

In the 1990s he entered into a well-known intellectual debate with Marshall Sahlins over the rationality of indigenous peoples. The debate was carried out through an examination of the details of the death of James Cook in the Hawaiian Islands in 1779. At the heart of the debate was how to understand the rationality of indigenous people. Obeyesekere insisted that indigenous people thought in essentially the same way as Westerners and was concerned that any argument otherwise would paint them as "irrational" and "uncivilized". In contrast, Sahlins argued that each culture may have different types of rationality that make sense of the world by focusing on different patterns and explain them within specific cultural narratives, and that assuming that all cultures lead to a single rational view is a form of eurocentrism.[4]

Books

Videos

Distributed by the Royal Anthropological Institute

References

  1. ^ "Gananath Obeyesekera, Emeritus Professor @ Princeton Anthropology". Princeton University.
  2. ^ Obeyesekere, Gananath (15 September 1984). Medusa's Hair. ISBN 0226616010.
  3. ^ Obeyesekere, Gananath (1984). The Cult of the Goddess Pattini. ISBN 0226616029.
  4. ^ Moore, Jerry D. 2009. "Marshall Sahlins: Culture Matters" in Moore, J.D. (2004). Visions of Culture: An Introduction to Anthropological Theories and Theorists. G - Reference, Information and Interdisciplinary Subjects Series. AltaMira Press. pp. 365–85. ISBN 978-0-7591-0411-2. Retrieved 2023-08-22.

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