Veena Das
Indian anthropologist renowned for work on violence, social suffering, and the textures of everyday life; a long-time professor at Johns Hopkins University and author of influential books including Critical Events and Life and Words.
Books
This list of books are ONLY the books that have been ranked on the lists that are aggregated on this site. This is not a comprehensive list of all books by this author.
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1. Life And Words
Violence and the Descent into the Ordinary
An anthropological exploration of how collective and intimate violence become woven into everyday life in urban India, especially in the aftermath of Partition and the 1984 anti-Sikh pogroms. Drawing on long-term ethnography, it traces how pain, memory, and speech circulate within families and neighborhoods, how the state and medical institutions engage suffering, and how ethical life is remade through ordinary practices. Rather than treating trauma as a singular rupture, it shows how wounds are absorbed into daily routines through silence, testimony, and care, reconfiguring social relations. The analysis probes the politics of recognition, the limits of language, and the complex work of witnessing.
The 17010th Greatest Book of All Time