Books by Veena Das

Textures of the Ordinary shows how life is marked not only by catastrophic events but also by the soft knife of economic deprivation and the repetitive corrosions and routine violence within everyday life itself. As an alternative to normative ethics, this book develops ordinary ethics as attentiveness to the other and as the ability of small acts of care to stand up to horrific violence.

In this powerful, compassionate work, one of anthropology's most distinguished ethnographers weaves together rich fieldwork with a compelling critical analysis in a book that will surely make a signal contribution to contemporary thinking about violence and how it affects everyday life. Veena Das examines case studies including the extreme violence of the Partition of India in 1947 and the massacre of Sikhs in 1984 after the assassination of then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. In a major departure from much anthropological inquiry, Das asks how this violence has entered "e;the recesses of the ordinary"e; instead of viewing it as an interruption of life to which we simply bear witness. Das engages with anthropological work on collective violence, rumor, sectarian conflict, new kinship, and state and bureaucracy as she embarks on a wide-ranging exploration of the relations among violence, gender, and subjectivity. Weaving anthropological and philosophical reflections on the ordinary into her analysis, Das points toward a new way of interpreting violence in societies and cultures around the globe. The book will be indispensable reading across disciplinary boundaries as we strive to better understand violence, especially as it is perpetrated against women.

Focusing on low-income neighborhoods in Delhi, this book stitches together three different sets of issues. It examines the different trajectories of illness: What are the circumstances under which illness is absorbed within the normal and when does it exceed the normal putting resources, relationships, and even one's world into jeopardy?

In our globalized world, differing conceptions of human nature and human values raise questions as to whether universal and partisan claims and perspectives can be reconciled, and whether a pluralistic ethos can transcend uncompromising notions as to what is true, good, and just. This title explores what it means to be human.