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STANLEY J. TAMBIAH APPOINTED AS DISTINGUISHED VISITING
PROFESSOR
Stanley Tambiah, the well-known anthropologist
who has spent his career studying the religions and cultures of Southeast
Asia, joins the faculty of Religious Studies in winter, 2003
as Distinguished Visiting Professor. He
will teach one quarter each year at UCSB. He
is one of six such distinguished visiting professors recently appointed
at the university.
His work engages a range of topics very much
at the center of the study of Buddhism. His
books include Buddhism and the Spirit
Cults in Northeast Thailand; The
Buddhist Saints of the Forest and the Cult of Amulets: A Study in Charisma,
Hagiography, Sectarianism, and Millennial Buddhism; Culture,
Thought and Social Action; Sri
Lanka: Ethnic Fratricide and the Dismantling of Democracy; Magic, Science, Religion and the Scope of Rationality; Buddhism Betrayed? Religion, Politics, and
Violence in Sri Lanka; and Leveling Crowds: Ethnonationalist Conflicts
and Collective Violence in South
Asia. Tambiah’s
precise analysis of religion in relation to politics, violence, and social
identity has been extremely influential for scholars working far beyond
his own field of Southeast Asian studies. His
frames of analysis, including notions such as “galactic polity,” “leveling
crowds,” “collective violence,” and “world renouncer and world conqueror”
are taken up by other anthropologists and students of religion generally.
Currently, his research focuses on diaspora communities
and transnational movements of people in an age of globalization.
Tambiah has taught at the University
of Ceylon, University
of Cambridge, University
of Chicago, and Harvard
University. At Harvard he chaired the Department of Anthropology
from 1984-87 and at present holds the Esther and Sidney Rabb Professorship
of Anthropology. His awards and
recognitions are numerous including the Huxley Memorial Medal from the
Royal Anthropological Institute and the Fukuoka International Academic
Prize plus three honorary degrees. He
is a Fellow of the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences,
the Royal Anthropological Institute, the National Academy of Sciences
in the United States,
and the British Academy.
At UCSB, he will teach a graduate seminar on broad comparative
themes and will be a valuable resource for faculty and students. He will contribute not only to our program in
Southeast Asian religions but will benefit the department generally because
of his skills in anthropological method and insistence that religions
generally must be viewed in their full cultural, historical, and political
contexts. We are extraordinarily fortunate in having Professor
Tambiah join us.
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