Education
Daniel was educated at Jaffna College. And Doctor of Philosophy degrees from the University of Chicago.
( Fluid Signs is the product of anthropological fieldwork...)
Fluid Signs is the product of anthropological fieldwork carried out among Tamil-speaking villagers in a Hindu village in Southern India. Combining a richness of ethnographic detail with a challenging and innovative theoretical analysis, Daniel argues that symbolic anthropologists have yet to appreciate the multifaceted function of the sign and its role in the creation of culture. This provocative study underscores the need for Western intellectual traditions in general and anthropology in particular to deepen its discourse with South Asian cultural and religious thought.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0520061675/?tag=2022091-20
( How does an ethnographer write about violence? How can ...)
How does an ethnographer write about violence? How can he make sense of violent acts, for himself and for his readers, without compromising its sheer excess and its meaning-defying core? How can he remain a scholarly observer when the country of his birth is engulfed by terror? These are some of the questions that engage Valentine Daniel in this exploration of life and death in contemporary Sri Lanka. In 1983 Daniel "walked into the ashes and mortal residue" of the violence that had occurred in his homeland. His planned project--the study of women's folk songs as ethnohistory--was immediately displaced by the responsibility that he felt had been given to him, by surviving family members and friends of victims, to recount beyond Sri Lanka what he had seen and heard there. Trained to do fieldwork by staying in one place and educated to look for coherence and meaning in human behavior, what does an anthropologist do when he is forced by circumstances to keep moving, searching for reasons he never finds? How does he write an ethnography (or an anthropography, to use the author's term) without transforming it into a pornography of violence? In avoiding fattening the anthropography into prurience, how does he avoid flattening it with theory? The ways in which Daniel grapples with these questions, and their answers, instill this groundbreaking book with a rare sense of passion, purpose, and intellect.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0691027730/?tag=2022091-20
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0520044290/?tag=2022091-20
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01MQH0JEX/?tag=2022091-20
(Daniel is a native speaker of Tamil, and his book is a pr...)
Daniel is a native speaker of Tamil, and his book is a product of anthropological fieldwork carried out among Tamil-speaking villagers in a Hindu village in Southern India. It is a study that underscores the need for Western intellectual traditions in general and anthropology in particular to deepen its interaction with South Asian culture and religious thought. xiv, 320 pages with bibliography and index. 5.75 x 8.5 inches. University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA 1984.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0520047257/?tag=2022091-20
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01FIYJ0U8/?tag=2022091-20
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01FIYRT5Q/?tag=2022091-20
Daniel was educated at Jaffna College. And Doctor of Philosophy degrees from the University of Chicago.
He is currently Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Southern Asian Institute at Columbia University. After school he joined Amherst College from where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree. He then received Master of Arts Daniel taught at the University of Washington (1978-1990).
He then taught at the University of Michigan (1990-1997), serving as Director of the Program in Comparative Studies in Social Transformation from 1995 to 1997.
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.
Daniel was one of the recipients of the 1995 Guggenheim Fellowship. He is proficient in Tamil, Sinhala, French and Malayalam.
( How does an ethnographer write about violence? How can ...)
(Daniel is a native speaker of Tamil, and his book is a pr...)
( Fluid Signs is the product of anthropological fieldwork...)
