• REMINISCENCES •

 

 

Sepideh Bajracharya

Assistant Professor of Anthropology

Lewis and Clark

 

Shuffling gently through the fruit and vegetable aisle at Star Market, I say hello. Tambi stops and smiles. I ask him what he is doing, he says some shopping-- leans to pick up a small green skinned papaya. “The papayas and mangoes here are useless,” I say. “No flavor, like cardboard, nothing like the ones we have back home.” “Yes, but sometimes you have a craving for that flavor, no? You want to remember that taste.” Smiles his gentle and wide gap-toothed smile.

 

 

Victor Manfredi

African Studies Center

Boston University

 

Sometime in 1986, Tambi asked me to type up the manuscript of his response to Gombrich's TLS review of  The Buddhist Saints of the Forest. When I delivered the pages to his house on my bike in a rainstorm, I apologised that they were wrapped in a plastic trash bag. He replied that this was entirely appropriate, because sooner or later the garbage dump is the ultimate repository of all our academic works. He was smiling broadly as he spoke, but I took him seriously, both because of his authority as a scholar of Buddhism and also given his exasperation at the "intellectual mugging" he'd just received from the Oxford Orientalist.

 

 

Tanya Luhrmann

Professor of Anthropology

Stanford University

 

My favorite memory of Tambi was of him giving his lectures on Magic, Science and Religion with those long pages of yellow legal paper and breaking off of a solemn analysis to make some sidebar comment. I was auditing the course, and I remember being struck by the course and taking the ideas so very seriously. And of course, they shaped the course of my life, because when I arrived at Cambridge I met Geoffrey Lloyd, one of his oldest friends. Geoffrey became an informal supervisor, even though he was an ancient philosopher (or classicist), and our discussions about Tambi and about magic, science and religion became my guiding questions.

 

 

James Ferguson

Professor of Anthropology

Stanford University

 

My strongest memories of Tambi come from the lecture hall, and it strikes me in retrospect that the lecture courses I took with him shaped me intellectually as much as anything else that happened to me in graduate school. In smaller social groups, Tambi could be quiet, even shy, but he was the most formidable imaginable presence at the lectern. As Ph.D. students, we didn’t usually pay much attention to lecture courses, convinced that the real action was in the seminar rooms. But Tambi’s lectures were different. There all sat at attention as his booming voice authoritatively laid out lucid overviews of entire fields and compelling arguments about the most fundamental issues in social theory. It was an experience that went far beyond any lecture classes I had taken previously, something more akin to losing oneself in a demanding text (indeed, the lectures for “Magic, Science, and Religion” later became the book, Magic, Science, Religion and the Scope of Rationality). It was a powerful lesson, both in how to think well and clearly and in the performative power of words -- a lesson that has stayed with me over the years and continues to inspire me.

 

 

Michael M.J. Fischer

Professor of Anthropology and of Science and Technology Studies

MIT

 

My first memories of meeting Tambi, when he came to teach at the University of Chicago, are of his vigorous participation in my dissertation defense – challenging, but friendly, probing but supportive – and of his class in Economic Anthropology which he started with Bernard Mandeville’s eighteenth-century The Fable of The Bees: or, Private Vices, Public Benefits. He would remain interested throughout the years in my work on Iran and Islam as part of his broad efforts at comparative analysis of religious institutions and ideological formations, frequently peppering me with questions about this or that possible analogy or difference. Among his many encouragements was his attempt to nominate me to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, of which he was a member.

 

My last memories of Tambi are wonderful meetings in his townhouse, often in the company of the Buddhist scholar Charlie Hallisey (who visited almost daily when Tambi could rarely get out), interviewing him for the essay that would appear as the afterword to the volume of his students’ and colleagues’ essays, edited by Felicity Aulino, Mitzi Goheen, and himself (Radical Egalitarianism, 2013); and at Neville Place at Fresh Pond, where periodically he went to stabilize his diabetes and where he stayed in his last months. In the townhouse, I would bring a bottle of wine to share, and, surrounded by his Japanese prints on the walls, we would reminisce about Ceylon and Sri Lanka (he was pleased to be reminded that I had visited Annuradapura as well as Kandy and driven around most of the island, visiting Dennis McGilvray and Steven Kemper at their fieldsites, and Nur Yalman’s village, albeit not Jaffna). We talked about his famous Supreme Court Justice uncle, his parents and sisters and brothers, his meeting Edmund Leach, the language laws of post-independence Ceylon, and the riots he and his students witnessed. I think he was pleased with how the essay came out. At Neville Place, we would just talk: he was always interested in what was going on, what was new. I’d tell him about Amitav Ghosh’s new novels, latest messages from Mariza Peirano in Brazil, meeting Prista Ratanapruck in Singapore and talking about her research with the Nepali Manangi long-distant traders who had a presence there too, and events of the day.

 

Tambi was a large presence, with his booming voice and gentle smile, his broad interests and his support for the work of others. When walking became increasingly difficult in his last years, he still made the effort to travel abroad when he could, and to come to seminars, especially when students or friends were presenting. Felicity Aulino would often take the role of chauffering him and supporting him by the arm as he slowly made his way from William James to the Faculty Club or elsewhere -- a treasured image of her compassion, and of the warmth he elicited from his students and friends. He was a regular in Mary-Jo and Byron Good’s house, often ensconced in the basement watching the Patriots and holding forth. I miss him, and treasure both his memory and his continuing presence. A’dieu, Tambi.

 

 

Kathleen Gallagher

Assistant Professor

Graduate Program for International Relations

St. Mary’s University

 

I first met Professor Tambiah (‘Tambi’) during a campus visit to Harvard prior to beginning grad school. I last saw him shuffling around his condo on Concord Avenue many years later, determined to take me to lunch and then make us tea despite the stiffness in his joints, the slowness in his movements, the occasional lapses in his memory. In-between he accompanied and guided me through coursework, fieldwork, dissertation writing and beyond.

 

I can still picture him in our introductory theory class (‘Proseminar’), drawing indecipherable figures on the table with one hand and scratching his forehead with the other as he answered my cohort’s questions. A simple query about Edmund Leach would transform into an impromptu lecture on structuralism followed by another on functionalism as we hastily attempted to keep pace. At such times I vacillated between scribbling notes, sitting back to listen and wishing I had a tape-recorder.

 

His apparent brilliance made it all seem so effortless. It was not until I was his Teaching Fellow in Gifts and Goods, a course on Economic Anthropology and his last at Harvard, that I appreciated the full extent of his intellect. From the Grundrisse to Bourdieu his handwritten lecture notes were unsparing in their nuance and attention to detail. I marveled at all the hard work that must have gone into their crafting, and I realized that one of the things that set him apart was the marriage of intellect with an unwavering work ethic, informed by the passionate pursuit of excellence. Tambi’s ‘brilliance’ was hard fought, and in so doing, made its achievement a possibility for the rest of us intellectual mortals.

 

When I first received word of Tambi’s passing from a friend in Sri Lanka, I cried. I then sought the comfort of shared memories from friends and colleagues, including my cohort at Harvard. I have also found solace in his release from confinement.

 

Mostly I am grateful simply to have known him, and in his honor I quickly culled together a lecture on conflict and violence for my own graduate students. I think Tambi would have appreciated that, for so much of his professional and personal life was devoted to exploring the intermingling of and contradictions between religion, ethnicity, political self-interest and violence. Thank you, Tambi, for being teacher, advisor, mentor and friend, and for demonstrating the power of anthropology for a world in need of understanding.

 

 

Jean and John Comaroff

Professors of Anthropology and of African and African American Studies

Harvard University

 

Our first live encounter with Stanley Tambiah was at the LSE in the late 1960's, when he gave a talk there, although, as graduate students in anthropology, we had already read a fair bit of his work. Jean, especially, had found his writings on Buddhism both subtle and suggestive as she was struggling in her own research on African Christianity to move beyond stubborn divides between religion and magic, spirit and matter. It was thus with some trepidation that we met him in the hallowed Seligman Library, where he was scheduled to speak. In those days, the English academy was a daunting place for callow students from the colonies; even librarians would talk to us loudly and deliberately, as if we were hard of hearing. Or simple-minded. We heard his laugh before we even saw him. He cut a distinguished, genial figure, smiling down on the assembled group of faculty and students. His talk – which dwelt on the interplay of Buddhist orthodoxy and the vibrant movements in North-East Thailand – breathed new life into what, at the time, was the rigor mortis of religion-as-structure.

 

We were captivated: not only by his poise and his warmth, but by the fact that, in what was still a rather formal pedagogic culture, he was unusually supportive to young scholars, particularly to those of us who, like him, had come from beyond the horizons of the European academy. In the face of shrill debate about anthropology’s colonial pedigree, he was a strikingly elegant example of the possibilities of remaking the discipline from within, of applying its unique insights to globally pressing, postcolonial issues -- among them, politics, conflict, and ethnic violence.

 

We were fortunate in encountering Tambi many times after that, in Cambridge and Chicago, in formal seminars and in informal conversations about the present and future of our now decidedly post-colonial discipline. John and he traveled to Moscow together, to the Russian Academy of Sciences, to lead a symposium there on the anthropology of ethnic violence; yet more memorably, we were together -- even toy-toyed hesitantly together – in May 1994 in South Africa, when the exuberant election of Nelson Mandela heralded the end of apartheid. To us, as to many others, Tambi was an enduring source of inspiration. He supported fulsomely our efforts to find our own place in the Euro-American academy, and to craft an anthropology capable of speaking to the post-colonial world. He would smile on us from afar, acknowledging our efforts, raising a quizzical eyebrow, signaling his support – support made manifest in an extraordinary act of generosity, when he nominated us both as fellows to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In generations to follow, there would be many remarkable scholars from the South who would help to make anthropology into a richly global field. But in Tambi’s time, the numbers were smaller, and the impact of figures like him much greater. He is truly irreplaceable, sorely missed.

 

 

Arthur Kleinman

Professor of Anthropology 

Harvard University

Professor of Psychiatry

Harvard Medical School

 

My memories of Tambi go way back. Somewhere in the early or mid 70s, while I was a graduate student in the Department, Tambi came to Harvard from Chicago as a Full Professor. In 1974 and 1975, Leon Eisenberg (HMS) and I, with Byron Good¹s assistance organized a faculty seminar on anthropology and medicine in which Tambi participated. Out of that seminar came the papers that formed the first several issues of the journal I founded, Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry. One of its papers in the first year was Tambi’s article on ritual healing. Here and elsewhere, he made the seminal point that anthropological studies of healing systems across cultures had to begin with deep ethnographic understanding of local symbols, social relations and emotions and only much later could make cross-cultural comparisons. For Tambi, subjectivity and culture came together in forming a participatory rationality which was what people experienced in rituals and which differed fundamentally from the standard rationality of everyday life.

 

I recall lively intellectual conversations over impressively prepared dinners at his (and Mary Winn Tambiah’s) home in Cambridge. I also recall running into Tambi in the Square when he was greatly agitated early in the development of the Sri Lankan civil war. He told me he had to study this conflict because it was tearing apart the homeland in which he as a young Tamil had made the choice to study Buddhism not just as an academic commitment but as an effort in cross-cultural understanding. He went on to radically reshape his intellectual agenda to make political violence in general his topic.

 

I will remember his warmth, his human presence, his passionate engagement with intellectual subjects, his fundamental focus on his writing, and his quiet but transformative happiness when his mentor Edmund Leach acknowledged the enormous contribution of his study of Buddhist kingdoms in Southeast Asia on the first page of the TLS. Stanley Tambiah was a special social and cultural anthropologist and Harvard scholar who helped make anthropology influential across our University and across the social sciences and humanities.

 

 

Norbert Peabody

Senior Research Fellow

Wolfson College

Cambridge University

 

It is not my intention here to offer an appraisal of the colossal enormity of Tambi’s intellectual contribution to anthropology, in particular, and the social sciences, more generally. I have done this elsewhere as has H L Seneviratne in his excellent obituary that appeared in the Colombo Telegraph. Instead, in this memorial to Tambi I would like to remember one of Tambi's somewhat under-appreciated qualities, namely his skill as a lecturer. The silver lining to my somewhat prolonged graduate student career at Harvard from 1983 to 1993 was that I had the good fortune to twice participate (first as student, then as teaching assistant) in each of the three lecture courses that Tambi offered in a three-yearly rotation. His lectures on Magic, Science and Religion, Economic Anthropology, and A Comparative Analysis of Social Stratification had cult-like followings, drawing undergraduate and graduate students as well as outside visitors from an incredibly broad range of disciplines across the social sciences, natural sciences and humanities.

 

Tambi was not a charismatic lecturer in any conventional sense and his lecture style would not be tolerated today. He rarely extemporised from his carefully prepared scripts; his oratory was monotone and static; and he never deployed electronic audio-visual media.Yet his lecture courses were mesmerising and were invariably packed out with overflow audiences. What I, and others, witnessed in these lecture courses was Tambi’s rare ability to play an extremely demanding “long game” of argumentation that required incredible levels of concentration and commitment from his audience. Over the course of 20 twice-weekly lectures in a term, he would gradually introduce and develop one theme after another that related to his topic of enquiry. Typically, he would begin by exploring the varied intellectual histories that informed how he came to pose a specific set of questions. Then he would gradually weave together analyses of the political and social histories that generated the objects of his analysis with richly multifaceted interpretations of their manifestations in the ethnographic present. Soon he would be juggling a dozen major ideas which he would keep in play for weeks on end -- occasionally drawing out links and synergies between them (and sometimes not) -- before binding them all tightly together in the final three or four, tour de force lectures of summation. For me, these epic journeys of thought were powerfully transformative beyond measure.

 

Curiously, it was also during these lectures that I also came to appreciate a deeply compassionate side of Tambi's personality (even when he had some difficulty expressing this quality in mundane social and professional interactions). Much has been rightly made of Tambi’s brave academic intervention exploring the underlying causes of the Sri Lankan civil war, an effort which put his life squarely at risk. I need not add to that discussion here, other than to say that the selflessness that Tambi displayed in this matter was surely beyond my capacity for emulation. But I also saw Tambi evince this same human regard in more quotidien ways, particularly in his unusually equitable intellectual treatment of his fellow scholars, predecessors and, ultimately, students.

 

I repeatedly witnessed this quality firsthand as Tambi's teaching assistant during our 15 minute "debriefings" in his office after each lecture. Here Tambi constantly sought feedback regarding his glosses and/or critiques of whosever work he had been discussing that day, questioning his fairness and frequently amending his notes and adjusting his arguments accordingly. I quickly appreciated Tambi’s remarkable even-handedness with his intellectual interlocutors even as he was engaged in fierce debate with them. Tambi was known for his trenchant critiques of the work of others, but he always insisted on first presenting their work in the best possible light. He was not satisfied with creating straw men with which to tilt. Rather he wanted to engage with others precisely where their work was strongest. In this quality, Tambi showed the deepest respect for his colleagues and set the highest professional standards for those who studied with him. Tambi refused to engage in petulant name calling and never resorted to emotive accusations of moral failure in assessing work of others for he, of all people, understood that we are all flawed in some respect and our human failings merit understanding not scorn.

 

 

Mariza Peirano

Departamento de Antropologia

Universidade de Brasilia

 

Of the many serendipities that grace our lives, the greatest for me was to meet Tambi at Harvard as a second year graduate student in 1976. I was introduced to his work three years before by Peter Silverwood-Cope, whose thesis had been supervised by Edmund Leach and who was teaching at the Universidade de Brasília at the time. Peter read my attempt to re-analyze Victor Turner’s Ndembu material and recommended Tambi’s papers on Malinowski and Evans-Pritchard. I was thrilled by them. When the time arrived for my Ph.D. I chose Harvard (instead of Chicago) only because I thought Tambi was still in England; what a delightful surprise to find him in Cambridge the following year. I took all of his classes. I considered it a rare privilege to attend the proseminar 205b, Economic Anthropology, Ritual as Communication (when Tambi was writing “A performative approach to ritual”), and Magic, Science and Religion (later on his Morgan Lectures). When advising me on my Specials Paper he asked me one simple question that enabled me to round up the final version of the Ndembu re-analysis. As a member of my thesis committee, he was concerned about not being familiar with Brazilian social sciences literature. But after reading the first chapter, he accepted the role and I was blessed by the fundamental questions that only an outsider can ask. It was Tambi who very gently made my interest in a comparison with India germinate. As our friendship and academic exchanges grew over the years, he remained not only a central intellectual reference, but also a model of intellectual honesty and theoretical inspiration.

 

In his writings he always tried to overcome dichotomies by suggesting ways for reconciling and combining opposite sides, a trait that was also manifested in his extreme gentleness, clear conclusions, strong principles and gracious behavior. Tambi was grand in all senses: his voice; his joyfulness; his intellectual interests; and the scope of his theoretical probings. On his 1996 trip to Brazil to deliver a keynote address at the meetings of the Association of Graduate Programs in the Social Sciences he was not disturbed by the long trip from Rio to Caxambu (a spa city on the mountains, four hours away by car) and was delighted that Brazil could remind him so much of his native Sri Lanka – the landscape, the climate, the vegetation, the fruits, the sun. Anthropologists in Brazil familiar with his work were charmed by his fine wit and unpretentiousness. For many years he would ask for news about the people he had met at that time, remembering their specific interests and affiliations, on many occasions referring to that visit as a “memorable” event. I remember his gentle comment about “Brazilians’ tolerance for noise” and the joy of being taken as a Brazilian at the airport.

 

Leveling Crowds was about to be published, and he seemed very happy. He also seemed overjoyed when, some years later, he received the proofs of Edmund Leach. An Anthropological Life to revise. After a long day at Monique Stark’s summer house in Rhode Island, upon returning to Cambridge he insisted that we search for an open store in Harvard Square to buy colored pencils because he was eager to begin making corrections on the book that same night. 

 

Over the years, we would keep in touch by telephone, and whenever I visited him he would always be full of ideas and plans for research still waiting to be done. But this was always followed by a smiling sigh and the remark that “Life is too short, you know?” I count myself fortunate to have known Tambi and I will continue to be moved by his enduring presence.

 

 

Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney

Professor of Anthropology

University of Wisconsin, Madison

 

Tambi, unfortunately, was not my teacher, mentor or a colleague. I don’t remember when I first met him, but it must have been one of the conferences of Social Anthropologists in the UK. He was already such a lofty figure that I did not approach him. It was likely the two occasions when we met in conferences in Japan in the early 1990s. He was by then a well-known anthropologist who received a red-carpet treatment in Japan. His Magic, science, religion, and the scope of rationality (Lewis Henry Morgan Lectures) was translated by Tawada Hiroshi and became enormously influential. In 1998 he received the most prestigious award for scholars of Asia – The Fukuoka Prize for Scholarly Work on Asian Cultures. I also remember a lovely lunch together near Collège de France when both of us were in Paris at different units of École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales. Whether in Paris or in Japan, he was always a keen ethnographer and told me his insightful observations. For example, as we were walking in the main plaza at Shibuya, Tokyo, he was struck by the scene of innumerable young couples hand in hand, and said “this must be the dating culture of the world.” Once in a while, he called me at home and I cherish the memory of his British English in a wonderful baritone, “Tambi here.” I called him quite regularly in his apartment just to keep in touch, but it became more and more difficult for him to talk on the phone, although I tried to cheer him up also at the Neville Center, perhaps up to a month or so before his final departure.

 

What I admired in his work was that his theoretical incisiveness did not compromise his devotion to detailed ethnographic and historical work. Coming from a distinguished Tamil family in Sri Lanka, he always cut a dignified figure. Yet, his work, especially Levelling Crowd, informs us of his sensitivity to ethnicity and Western cultural and political hegemony – an aspect seldom associated with his work. He writes: “Liberal democracies in Western Europe and the United States frequently imposed authoritarian rule abroad, the exploitation of native labor and resources, and the inferiorization, if not erosion, of the cultures of the colonized.” This statement is of pressing relevance at present as well as in the past.

 

His contribution to anthropology is unique and immesurable. We miss the intellectual giant but his influence will last a long time to come even among those who are not fortunate enough to have known him in person. 

 

 

Michael Herzfeld

Professor of Anthropology

Harvard University

 

I remember Tambi as an imposing figure when I was an undergraduate at Cambridge University. For years we did not actually meet, but when I came to Harvard in 1991 he quickly became someone I could turn to, despite the rather intimidating thought that this hitherto almost mythical figure was now a departmental colleague!

 

Soon after returning from my first visit to Thailand in 1997, I started thinking seriously about doing fieldwork there. One day in the William James Hall cafeteria (we had one back then!), I mentioned this to Tambi. He appeared not to hear; then he announced that it was a fine day!

 

So I tried again a few days later, and he countered with some remark about a student’s problems. Something similar greeted my third attempt. So the fourth time I challenged him, asking him why he always changed the subject when I brought this idea up. There was a pause; then Tambi – whose refusal to discuss it had puzzled me as I knew he was neither jealous by nature nor had any reason to be jealous of me in this instance – said, in an earnest and rather tense voice, ‘Well, Michael, you are doing interesting work comparing Greek and Italian nationalism, and I don’t want you to give that up!’ I almost burst into tears, so patent was this simply about his caring concern for the wellbeing of a friend.

 

As months went by and he realized that I was indeed serious, that I wasn’t about to give up either the older work or my new obsession, he became much more willing to encourage me to push forward, especially after he heard me speaking Thai one day. Then Frank Reynolds came to give a lecture and, in front of a group of goggle-eyed graduate students, Tambi announced that I was his “successor in Thai Studies.” Again, I was overwhelmed. And a very dear Thai friend and colleague, a distinguished anthropologist who also knew and admired Tambi, said that this was a special kind of blessing – as indeed it was.

 

If I’ve managed to do anything useful in Thailand, what sustained me at the beginning was Tambi’s insistence on testing me but also his generosity in supporting and guiding me when he saw that I would not be dissuaded. I’m glad that before he passed away I was able to tell him that we’d established a permanent lecture series in Thai Studies at Harvard in his honor. The first one will be given by Katherine Bowie, his first U.S.-based graduate advisee.

 

It’s sad that he could not have been around to hear the inaugural Tambiah Lecture, but Tambi’s intellectual and personal integrity, his deep kindness and compassion, his playful friendship, and his original and restless engagement will continue to sustain us and our own successors.