Sri Lankan Tamil academic, anthropologist and author
Professor Errol Valentine Daniel is a Sri Lankan Tamil academic, anthropologist and author. He is currently Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Southern Asian Institute at Columbia University.[1][2]
Early life
Daniel was educated at Jaffna College.[3][4] After school he joined Amherst College from where he received a B.A. degree.[5] He then received M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Chicago.[5]
Career
Daniel taught at the University of Washington (1978–90).[6] He then taught at the University of Michigan (1990–97), serving as Director of the Program in Comparative Studies in Social Transformation from 1995 to 1997.[5] He then joined Columbia University. Daniel has also been a visiting professor at the University of Amsterdam, University of Texas at Austin, Centre d’étude de l’Inde et de l’Asie Sud and United Nations University.[5]
Daniel was one of the recipients of the 1995 Guggenheim Fellowship.[5] He is proficient in Tamil, Sinhala, French and Malayalam.[5][7]
Works
Valentine has written several books:[1]
- Karma: An Anthropological Inquiry (1983, University of California Press. co-editor Charles F. Keyes)[8]
- Fluid Signs: Being a Person the Tamil Way (1984, University of California Press)[9]
- The Semeiosis of Suicide in Sri Lanka (1989, in Semiotics, Self, and Society by Benjamin Lee and Greg Urban, Mouton de Gruyter)
- Plantations, Proletarians, and Peasants in Colonial Asia (1992, Frank Cass & Co, co-editors Henry Bernstein and Tom Brass)
- Culture/Contexture: Essays in Anthropology and Literary Study (1996, University of California Press, co-editor Jeffrey M. Peck)[10]
- Mistrusting Refugees (1996, University of California Press, co-editor John Knudsen)[11]
- Charred Lullabies: Chapters in an Anthropography of Violence (1997, Princeton University Press)[12]
- Suffering Nation and Alienation (1997, in Social Suffering by Kleinman, Das and Lock, University of California Press)[13]
- The Limits of Culture (1998, in In Near Ruins: Cultural Theory at the End of the Century by Nicholas B. Dirks, University of Minnesota Press)
- The Refugee: A Discourse on Displacement (2002, in Exotic No More: Anthropology on the Front Lines by Jeremy MacClancy, University of Chicago Press)
