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Anthropology of religion
Basic concepts Afterlife Animism Augury Communitas Comparative religion Divination Divine language Evolutionary origin of religion Fetishism Great Spirit Henotheism Initiation Laying on of hands Liminality Magic Mana Monotheism Nympholepsy Oracle Pilgrimage Polytheism Rite of passage Ritual Sacred language Sacredness /Profane Sacred site Shamanism Soul dualism Superstition Theories about religion Totem Transtheism Veneration of the dead
Case studies Magic Coral Gardens and Their Magic Treatise on the Apparitions of Spirits and on Vampires or Revenants Neo-Paganism Ritual Angakkuq Babaylan Bobohizan Bomoh Bora Dukun Miko Jhākri Pawang Slametan Wu Revitalization movements Cargo cult Ghost Dance Handsome Lake
Related articles The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life Purity and Danger Myth and ritual Archaeology of religion and ritual Poles in mythology Lived religion Elite religion
Major theorists Akbar S. Ahmed Talal Asad Joseph Campbell Mary Douglas Émile Durkheim Mircea Eliade Arnold van Gennep René Girard E. E. Evans-Pritchard James Frazer Fustel de Coulanges Clifford Geertz Robin Horton Claude Lévi-Strauss Robert Marett Roy Rappaport Saba Mahmood Marshall Sahlins Melford Spiro Stanley Tambiah Victor Turner Edward Burnett Tylor Daniel Martin Varisco Anthony F. C. Wallace
Journals Folklore The Hibbert Journal The Journal of Religion Oceania
Religions Ethnic andfolk religions Afro-American religion Alaska Native religion Anito Atua Böö mörgöl Chinese folk religion Hanitu Hausa Kejawèn Native American religion Noaidi Shindo Shamanism in Siberia Shinto Tengrism African traditional religions Buddhism Mahayana Nichiren Pure Land Shingon Theravada Tiantai Tibetan Vajrayana Zen Christianity Adventism Anglicanism Armenian Apostolic Church Baptists Calvinism Catholic Church Coptic Orthodoxy Eastern Orthodoxy Ethiopian Orthodoxy Greek Orthodoxy Lutheranism Methodism Nestorianism Oriental Orthodoxy Pentecostalism Protestantism Quakers Russian Orthodoxy Hinduism Hindu denominations Shaivism Shaktism Smartism Vaishnavism Ayyavazhi Islam Ahmadiyya Ibadi Mahdavia Non-denominational Quranists Shia Sufism Sunni Yazdânism Judaism Conservative Haredi Hasidic Haymanot Karaite Orthodox Reform Jainism Digambara Śvetāmbara Sikhism
Social andcultural anthropology
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Stanley Jeyaraja Tambiah (16 January 1929^[1] – 19 January 2014)^[2] was asocial anthropologist^[3] and Esther and Sidney Rabb Professor(Emeritus) of Anthropology atHarvard University.^[4] He specialised in studies ofThailand,Sri Lanka, andTamils, as well as theanthropology of religion and politics.

Tambiah was born inSri Lanka to a ChristianTamil family. He attendedS. Thomas' College, Mount Lavinia for his primary and secondary education. After finishing hisundergraduate education at theUniversity of Ceylon in 1951, he attendedCornell University, graduating in 1954 with a PhD.^[3]He began teaching sociology at the University of Ceylon in 1955, where he remained until 1960. After a few years as theUNESCO Teaching Assistant for Thailand, he taught at theUniversity of Cambridge from 1963 to 1972 and at theUniversity of Chicago from 1973 to 1976.^[1]He joined the faculty of Harvard University in 1976.^[4]

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. AtHarvard, he trained several generations of anthropologists in a number of fields. He also served on theNational Research Council's Committee for International Conflict Resolution.^[3] 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).^[5]

In November 1997, Tambiah received the prestigiousBalzan Prize^[3] 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".^[6]A month later, theRoyal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland awarded him its highest recognition,^[7]the Huxley Memorial Medal and Lecture.^[8]In September 1998, he was awarded theFukuoka Asian Culture Prize by the city ofFukuoka, capital ofFukuoka Prefecture, Japan.^[9]

In 2000, he became a Corresponding Fellow of theBritish Academy,^[10] a title given to those who have "attained high international standing" in adiscipline in thehumanities orsocial sciences.^[11]

Scholars have drawn on Tambiah's work to theorize communal conflicts in many other settings, such as nineteenth-century Syria.^[12]

• 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.
• Form and Meaning of Magical Acts, in "Culture, Thought, and Social Action: An Anthropological Perspective", Harvard University Press, 1985 [1973], pp. 60–86.
• Sri Lanka: Ethnic Fratricide and the Dismantling of Democracy, Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1986.ISBN 978-0-226-78951-4
• Magic, Science and Religion and the Scope of Rationality (Lewis Henry Morgan Lectures). Cambridge University Press, 1990.ISBN 978-0-521-37631-0.
• 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 978-0-226-78950-7.
• 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.
• Edmund Leach: An Anthropological Life. Cambridge University Press, 2002.ISBN 978-0-521-52102-4.

• List of Balzan Prize recipients

• Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, "Stanley J. Tambiah", Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences (2015)

• 1929 births
• 2014 deaths
• American social anthropologists
• Cornell University alumni
• Anthropologists of religion
• Harvard University faculty
• Sri Lankan emigrants to the United States
• American people of Sri Lankan Tamil descent
• Sri Lankan Christians
• Sri Lankan Tamil people
• Sri Lankan academics
• Sri Lankan Indologists
• Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences
• Corresponding fellows of the British Academy

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