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.
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Editorial Reviews
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"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
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About the Author
E. Valentine Daniel is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan and coeditor of Culture/Contexture (California, 1995).
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8 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
A waste of time,
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This review is from: Fluid Signs: Being a Person the Tamil Way (Paperback)
I was disappointed by this book. The author focusses almost exclusively on matters that probably never concerned more than a few Tamils and certainly aren't taken seriously today. Reading this book to learn about "Being a Person the Tamil Way" would be like studying the fine details of feng shui to learn about being a person the Chinese way. Putting it another way, imagine reading a whole chapter in a book about what we mean when we speak of "home". Do we mean our present house? Our parents' house? Our town, our region, our country? How would we define the boundaries of our "home"? Maybe this book makes sense to a particular type of academic or intellectual, but for anyone who merely wishes to read an ethnography about Tamil culture, this book would be a waste of time.
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First Sentence:
On a Sunday morning two weeks after my wife and I had settled in the village of Kalappur, the humdrum pace of village life was startled by the arrival of a chauffeur-driven Mercedes-Benz. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
stula sariram, semeiotic sign, stingy kunam, dicent sign, logical interpretant, emotional interpretant, map drawers, eighteen steps, body sheaths, cultural account, interpretive account, indexical signs, symbolic constructs, sign types, bodily substance, componential analysis Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Sri Lanka, Selvaraja Pillai, Sabari Malai, Eru Meli, South Asian, Tamil Nadu, Lord Ayyappan, Andiya Pillai, South Indian, Vastu Purusa, Present Absent, Strong Weak, Kari Malai, Sadava Kavuntan, Sounderam Pillai, Sri Rangam, Theoretical Interlude, Victor Turner New!
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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
On a Sunday morning two weeks after my wife and I had settled in the village of Kalappur, the humdrum pace of village life was startled by the arrival of a chauffeur-driven Mercedes-Benz. Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
stula sariram, semeiotic sign, stingy kunam, dicent sign, logical interpretant, emotional interpretant, map drawers, eighteen steps, body sheaths, cultural account, interpretive account, indexical signs, symbolic constructs, sign types, bodily substance, componential analysis Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Sri Lanka, Selvaraja Pillai, Sabari Malai, Eru Meli, South Asian, Tamil Nadu, Lord Ayyappan, Andiya Pillai, South Indian, Vastu Purusa, Present Absent, Strong Weak, Kari Malai, Sadava Kavuntan, Sounderam Pillai, Sri Rangam, Theoretical Interlude, Victor Turner New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 13
books:
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100
books
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- Speech and Phenomena: And Other Essays on Husserl's Theory of Signs by Jacques Derrida on page 295, and Back Matter
- The Rites of Passage by Arnold van Gennep in Back Matter
- The Character of Kinship by Jack Goody in Back Matter
- Right and Left by Joseph Roth in Back Matter
- Ritual Process, The: Structure and Anti-Structure by Victor Turner in Back Matter
See all 13 books this book cites
- Sacred Pain: Hurting the Body for the Sake of the Soul by Ariel Glucklich in Back Matter (1), Back Matter (2), and Back Matter (3)
- Hindu Kingship and Polity in Precolonial India (Cambridge Studies in Indian History and Society) by Norbert Peabody on page 42, page 90, and Back Matter
- An Introduction to Hinduism (Introduction to Religion) by Gavin D. Flood in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- The Village in India (Oxford in India Readings in Sociology and Social Anthropology) by Vandana Madan on page 268, and Back Matter
- Journey through the Twelve Forests: An Encounter with Krishna by David L. Haberman in Front Matter, and Back Matter
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