Stanley Jeyaraja Tambiah

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Stanley Jeyaraja Tambiah is a leading social anthropologist and Harvard University professor. He specializes in studies of Thailand, Sri Lanka, and Tamils, as well as the anthropology of religion and politics. He was born in Sri Lanka and is of Tamil ethnicity. His earliest published work was an ethno-historical study of modern and medieval Thailand. He then became interested in the comparative study of the ways Western categories of magic, science and religion have been used by anthropologists to make sense of other cultures which do not use this three-part system. After the outbreak of civil war in Sri Lanka, he began to study the role of competing religious and ethnic identities in that country. At Harvard, he has trained several generations of anthropologists in a number of fields.

[edit] Major Publications

Buddhism and the Spirit Cults in North-East Thailand. Cambridge University Press, 1970. ISBN 0-521-09958-7
World Conqueror and World Renouncer : A Study of Buddhism and Polity in Thailand against a Historical Background (Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology). Cambridge University Press, 1997. ISBN 0-521-29290-5
Magic, Science and Religion and the Scope of Rationality (Lewis Henry Morgan Lectures).Cambridge University Press, 1990. ISBN 0-521-37631-9
Buddhism Betrayed? : Religion, Politics, and Violence in Sri Lanka (A Monograph of the World Institute for Development Economics Research). University Of Chicago Press, 1992. ISBN 0-226-78950-0
Leveling Crowds : Ethnonationalist Conflicts and Collective Violence in South Asia. (Comparative Studies in Religion and Society). University of California Press, 1997. ISBN 0-520-20642-8