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University of California Press

Fluid Signs

Being a Person the Tamil Way
by E. Valentine Daniel (Author)
Paperback eBook
Price: $33.95 / £29.00
Publication Date: Sep 1987
Edition: 1st Edition
Title Details:
Rights: World
Pages: 215
ISBN: 9780520061675
Trim Size: 5.5 x 8.25
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About the Book

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.


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 argu

About the Author

E. Valentine Daniel is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan and coeditor of Culture/Contexture (California, 1995).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Note on Transliteration
1. Introduction

PART I. TOWARD COMPATIBILITY
2. An Or Known
3. A House Conceived
4. Sexuality Exposed
5. Km;tams Divined

PART II. TOWARD EQUIPOISE
6. A Theoretical Interlude
7. Equilibrium Regained
8. A "Differant" Conclusion

Bibliography
Index

Reviews

"Daniel is brilliant, and this work is the product of all his powers of imagination and expression. He is also a flawless scholar: bilingual, so that his translations are accurate; gifted, so that they are charming; well-read, so that his discussions are set in the full context of previous scholarship; and very, very funny, so that his depictions of the quandaries of his informants, as well as himself, are a joy to read."—Wendy O'Flaherty