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Calls to "decolonize" the social sciences have reverberated in academia since at least the 1950s. Anthropology, in particular, has been marked as the "child of colonialism" and "handmaiden of imperialism" (Gough 1968). Over the course of eight decades now, critics have highlighted the unequal power structures which have framed ethnographic practices and anthropological knowledge production. Yet, anthropology's "savage slot" (and its manifestation in newer iterations) along with its epistemological and political logic have yet to be dislodged, persisting in contemporary disciplinary practices. This short essay argues for the need to address this crucial gap between anthropological theory and disciplinary practices, to act urgently to acknowledge and then resoundingly reject the haunting legacy of anthropology's "savage/primitive/native slot." Given that decolonization is ultimately about dismantling global hierarchies, I suggest that this can only be achieved through materializing progressive and deeply reflexive practices in the work of doing, writing, and teaching ethnography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Until its defeat in 2009, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) controlled numerous civil institutions in the north and east of Sri Lanka. However, the Hindu temples within these territories managed to maintain their autonomy. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Sri Lanka, I contend that central to this paradox was contestation over who had the power to govern the life and death of Tamil subjects. Revisiting the anthropology of sovereignty, I propose an alternative idiom of sovereignty: a vulnerable sovereignty emerging with Hindu deities and based on interdependency and coexistence. I stress that vulnerability does not necessarily make the deities powerless but is the point where the sovereign deity reasserts its power. Finally, I contend that, faced with this idiom of sovereignty, the LTTE learned to embody its logic in its relation with the deities. I argue, thus, that sovereigns can also be thought of outside the notion of absolute sovereign power, bare life, and biopower and instead as sites of vulnerability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A number of categories that constitute the intellectual heritage of students of Hinduism are problematized by focusing on the categories 'folk Hinduism' and 'Sanskritization'. The main aim is to deconstruct the categories by utilizing ethnography to raise questions about the continued value of using the named categories for making sense of empirical, everyday manifestations of 'Hinduism' in contemporary societies, especially among Hindu communities in the diaspora.

The topic discusses the importance of continuing discussion and debates on the opening up of the social sciences. Various ways by which social scientists can begin to affect the practice of the social sciences is listed.

Pierced by Murugan's Lance: Ritual, Power and Moral Redemption among Malaysian Hindus. By Elizabeth Fuller Collins. Dekalb: Northern Illinois Press, 1997. 254 pp. As I see it, Collins' focus on [...]