Stanley Jeyaraja Tambiah

{{Infobox scientist

| name = Stanley Jeyaraja Tambiah

| image =

| caption =

| birth_date = {{birth date|1929|1|16|df=y}}

| birth_place = British Ceylon (now Sri Lanka)

| death_date = {{death date and age|2014|01|19|1929|01|16|df=y}}

| death_place = Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States

| citizenship =

| nationality = Sri Lankan

| field = Social anthropologist

| work_institutions = S. Thomas' College, Mount Lavinia
University of Ceylon
University of Cambridge
University of Chicago
Harvard University

| alma_mater = University of Ceylon
Cornell University

| doctoral_advisor =

| doctoral_students = Chris Fuller

| known_for =

| influences =

| influenced =

| prizes = Balzan Prize (1997)

Fukuoka Asian Culture Prize (1998)

| footnotes =

}}

Stanley Jeyaraja Tambiah (16 January 1929 – 19 January 2014){{cite web | url=http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/bostonglobe/obituary.aspx?n=stanley-jeyaraj-tambiah&pid=169187897& | title=STANLEY JEYARAJ TAMBIAH – Obituary, Condolences | publisher=The Boston Globe | date=21 January 2014 | accessdate=24 January 2014}} was a social anthropologist and Esther and Sidney Rabb Professor (Emeritus) of Anthropology at Harvard University. He specialised in studies of Thailand, Sri Lanka, and Tamils, as well as the anthropology of religion and politics.

Biography

Tambiah was born in Sri Lanka to a Christian Tamil family. He attended S. Thomas' College, Mount Lavinia for his primary and secondary education. After finishing his undergraduate education at the University of Ceylon in 1951, he attended Cornell University, graduating in 1954 with a PhD.

{{cite news

| first = Ken

| last = Gewertz

| title = Stanley Tambiah To Be Awarded Balzan Prize For Groundbreaking Work on Ethnic Violence

| url = http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/1997/10.23/StanleyTambiahT.html

| work = Harvard Gazette

| date = 23 October 1997

| accessdate = 19 August 2007}}

He began teaching sociology at the University of Ceylon in 1955, where he remained until 1960. After a few years as the UNESCO Teaching Assistant for Thailand, he taught at the University of Cambridge from 1963 to 1972 and at the University of Chicago from 1973 to 1976.

{{cite web

|url = http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/information/biography/pqrst/tambiah_stanley.html

|title = Stanley Tambiah

|access-date = 19 August 2007

|last = Anthony

|first = Peterson

|work = Anthropology Biography Web

|publisher = Emuseum @ Minnesota State University, Mankato

|url-status = dead

|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20071018053756/http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/information/biography/pqrst/tambiah_stanley.html

|archive-date = 18 October 2007

|df = dmy-all

}}

He joined the faculty of Harvard University in 1976.

{{cite news

|title = Harvard Foundation unveils portraits: Six minority faculty and administrators recognized and recognizable

|url = http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2005/05.12/01-portraits.html

|work = Harvard Gazette

|date = 12 May 2005

|access-date = 19 August 2007

|url-status = dead

|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20070816152158/http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2005/05.12/01-portraits.html

|archive-date = 16 August 2007

|df = dmy-all

}}

His earliest major 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 trained several generations of anthropologists in a number of fields. He also served on the National Research Council's Committee for International Conflict Resolution. He did field research on the Organisation of Buddhist temples in Sri Lanka (Monks, Priests and Peasants, a Study of Buddhism and Social Structure in Central Ceylon and several papers in the American Anthropologists and the Journal of Asian Studies).{{cite web | url=https://www.academia.edu/1196244 | title=Review of Edmund Leach: An Anthropological Life by Edmund Leach; Stanley Tambiah | publisher=Anthropology Today, Vol. 21, No. 3 (Jun. 2005), pp. 22–23 | accessdate=21 January 2014}}

Awards

In November 1997, Tambiah received the prestigious Balzan Prize for "penetrating social-anthropological analysis of the fundamental problems of ethnic violence in South East Asia and original studies on the dynamics of Buddhist societies [that] have opened the way to an innovative and rigorous social-anthropological approach to the internal dynamics of different civilizations".

{{cite web

|url = http://www.balzan.it/Premiati_eng.aspx?Codice=0000001326&nome=Stanley%20Jeyaraja%20Tambiah

|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20060514220748/http://www.balzan.it/Premiati_eng.aspx?Codice=0000001326&nome=Stanley%20Jeyaraja%20Tambiah

|url-status = dead

|archive-date = 14 May 2006

|title = Stanley Jeyaraja Tambiah

|access-date = 20 August 2007

|publisher = Fondazione Internazionale Balzan

}}

A month later, the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland awarded him its highest recognition,

{{cite web

| url = http://www.therai.org.uk/honours/honours.html

| title = Honours

| accessdate = 19 August 2007

| work = Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland |archiveurl = https://web.archive.org/web/20070809090447/http://www.therai.org.uk/honours/honours.html |archivedate = 9 August 2007}}

the Huxley Memorial Medal and Lecture.

{{cite web

| url = http://www.therai.org.uk/honours/prior_huxley.html

| title = Huxley Memorial Medal and Lecture: Prior Recipients

| accessdate = 19 August 2007

| work = Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland |archiveurl = https://web.archive.org/web/20070712145950/http://www.therai.org.uk/honours/prior_huxley.html |archivedate = 12 July 2007}}

In September 1998, he was awarded the Fukuoka Asian Culture Prize by the city of Fukuoka, capital of Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan.

{{cite news

| first = Ken

| last = Gewertz

| title = Stanley Tambiah To Be Awarded Fukuoka Asian Cultural Prize

| url = http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/1998/08.06/StanleyTambiahT.html

| work = Harvard Gazette

| date = 6 August 1998

| accessdate = 19 August 2007}}

In 2000, he became a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy,

{{cite news

| title = British Academy elects Tambiah

| url = http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2000/11.09/03-newsmakers.html

| work = Harvard Gazette

| date = 9 November 2000

| accessdate = 19 August 2007}} a title given to those who have "attained high international standing" in a discipline in the humanities or social sciences.

{{cite web

|url = http://www.britac.ac.uk/fellowship/index.html

|title = The Fellowship of the British Academy

|access-date = 19 August 2007

|year = 2006

|publisher = The British Academy

|url-status = dead

|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20070709150936/http://www.britac.ac.uk/fellowship/index.html

|archive-date = 9 July 2007

|df = dmy-all

}}

Legacy and Impact

Scholars have drawn on Tambiah's work to theorize communal conflicts in many other settings, such as nineteenth-century Syria.{{Cite book |last=Abu-Mounes |first=Rana |title=Muslim-Christian relations in Damascus amid the 1860 riot |date=2022 |publisher=Brill |isbn=978-90-04-46495-7 |series=History of Christian-Muslim relations |location=Leiden ; Boston}}

Selected publications

Buddhism and the Spirit Cults in North-East Thailand. Cambridge University Press, 1970. {{ISBN|978-0-521-09958-5}}.
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, 1976. {{ISBN|978-0-521-29290-0}}.
The Buddhist Saints of the Forest and the Cult of Amulets. Cambridge University Press, 1984.
[https://books.google.com/books?id=S_jZRPPy2jcC&pg=PA340 Form and Meaning of Magical Acts], in "Culture, Thought, and Social Action: An Anthropological Perspective", Harvard University Press, 1985 [1973], pp. 60–86.
[https://books.google.com/books?id=3V2xRnKcOEAC Sri Lanka: Ethnic Fratricide and the Dismantling of Democracy], Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1986. {{ISBN|978-0-226-78951-4}}
[https://books.google.com/books?id=Vpd6zaVreUkC Magic, Science and Religion and the Scope of Rationality] (Lewis Henry Morgan Lectures). Cambridge University Press, 1990. {{ISBN|978-0-521-37631-0}}.
[https://books.google.com/books?id=C-PTZOAbFxYC Buddhism Betrayed? : Religion, Politics, and Violence in Sri Lanka] (A Monograph of the World I''nstitute for Development Economics Research). University of Chicago Press, 1992. {{ISBN|978-0-226-78950-7}}.
[https://books.google.com/books?id=58muiumm1F8C Leveling Crowds : Ethnonationalist Conflicts and Collective Violence in South Asia]. (Comparative Studies in Religion and Society). University of California Press, 1996. {{ISBN|978-0-520-20642-7}}.
[https://books.google.com/books?id=WBfBkGvRmowC Edmund Leach: An Anthropological Life]. Cambridge University Press, 2002. {{ISBN|978-0-521-52102-4}}.

References

External links

[http://www.nasonline.org/publications/biographical-memoirs/memoir-pdfs/tambiah-stanley.pdf Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, "Stanley J. Tambiah", Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences (2015)]

Category:1929 births

Category:2014 deaths

Category:American social anthropologists

Category:Cornell University alumni

Category:Anthropologists of religion

Category:Harvard University faculty

Category:Sri Lankan emigrants to the United States

Category:American people of Sri Lankan Tamil descent

Category:Sri Lankan Christians

Category:Sri Lankan Tamil people

Category:Sri Lankan academics

Category:Sri Lankan Indologists