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Veena Das


Veena Das (Hindi: वीना दास; born 1945) is the Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Anthropology at the Johns Hopkins University. She is an established figure in Indian Anthropology, and one of the most frequently cited anthropologists. Her areas of theoretical specialization include the anthropology of violence, social suffering, and the state. Das has received multiple international awards including the Ander Retzius Gold Medal, delivered the prestigious Lewis Henry Morgan Lecture and was named a foreign honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Das completed her Ph.D. in 1970 under the supervision of M. N. Srinivas. She was professor of anthropology at the New School for Social Research from 1997-2000, before moving to Johns Hopkins University, where she served as chair of the Department of Anthropology between 2001 and 2008.

Her first book Structure and Cognition: Aspects of Hindu Caste and Ritual (Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1977) brought the textual practices of 13th to 17th century in relation to self representation of caste groups in focus. Her identification of the structure of Hindu thought in terms of the tripartite division between priesthood, kinship and renunciation proved to be an extremely important structuralist interpretation of the important poles within which innovations and claims to new status by caste groups took place.

Veena Das's most recent book is Life and Words: Violence and the Descent into the Ordinary, California University Press, 2006. As the title implies, Das sees violence not as an interruption of ordinary life but as something that is implicated in the ordinary. The philosopher Stanley Cavell has written a memorable foreword to the book in which he says that one way of reading it is as a companion to Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations. One of the chapters in the book deals with the state of abducted women in the post-independence time period and has been the interest of various legal historians. Life and Words is heavily influenced by Wittgenstein and Stanley Cavell, but it also deals with particular moments …


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