Valentine Daniel

Professor Errol Valentine Daniel is a Sri Lankan academic, anthropologist and author. He is currently Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Southern Asian Institute at Columbia University.^[1][2]

Valentine Daniel
Education	Amherst College University of Chicago
Occupation	Academic

Early life

Daniel is of Tamil descent on his father's side and of Burgher descent on his mother side.^[3] He was educated at Jaffna College.^[4][5] After school he joined Amherst College from where he received a B.A. degree.^[6] He then received M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Chicago.^[6]

Career

Daniel taught at the University of Washington (1978–90).^[7] He then taught at the University of Michigan (1990–97), serving as Director of the Program in Comparative Studies in Social Transformation from 1995 to 1997.^[6] He then joined Columbia University. Daniel has also been a visiting professor at the University of Amsterdam, University of Texas at Austin, Centre d’étude de l’Inde et de l’Asie Sud and United Nations University.^[6]

Daniel was one of the recipients of the 1995 Guggenheim Fellowship.^[6] He is proficient in Tamil, Sinhala, French and Malayalam.^[6][8]

Works

Valentine has written several books:^[1]

• Karma: An Anthropological Inquiry (1983, University of California Press. co-editor Charles F. Keyes)^[9]
• Fluid Signs: Being a Person the Tamil Way (1984, University of California Press)^[10]
• The Semeiosis of Suicide in Sri Lanka (1989, in Semiotics, Self, and Society by Benjamin Lee and Greg Urban, Mouton de Gruyter)
• Plantations, Proletarians, and Peasants in Colonial Asia (1992, Frank Cass & Co, co-editors Henry Bernstein and Tom Brass)
• Culture/Contexture: Essays in Anthropology and Literary Study (1996, University of California Press, co-editor Jeffrey M. Peck)^[11]
• Mistrusting Refugees (1996, University of California Press, co-editor John Knudsen)^[12]
• Charred Lullabies: Chapters in an Anthropography of Violence (1997, Princeton University Press)^[13]
• Suffering Nation and Alienation (1997, in Social Suffering by Kleinman, Das and Lock, University of California Press)^[14]
• The Limits of Culture (1998, in In Near Ruins: Cultural Theory at the End of the Century by Nicholas B. Dirks, University of Minnesota Press)
• The Refugee: A Discourse on Displacement (2002, in Exotic No More: Anthropology on the Front Lines by Jeremy MacClancy, University of Chicago Press)