FASS Staff Profile

DR INDIRA ARUMUGAM
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR
DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY AND ANTHROPOLOGY

Appointment:
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR
Office:
AS1/03-17
Email:
socia@nus.edu.sg
Tel:
(65) 6516-6974
Fax:
Homepage:
http://profile.nus.edu.sg/fass/socia/
Tabs

Brief Introduction

 

 

Balinese cockfights and the Melanesian Kula exchange, first encountered as an undergraduate at NUS, are what inspired me to become an anthropologist. As part of my PhD, I spent 20 months doing fieldwork in the village in Tamil Nadu, South India where I had been born and from which I had migrated to Singapore as a two-year old. 

My research is focused on the grounded historical and cultural analysis of key political and economic processes such as democracy, neo-liberal economics and globalization. Underpinning all this is keen enjoyment in doing ethnographic fieldwork which I believe is critical to understanding how ordinary people grapple with the complexities of their rapidly changing societies.

I have written extensively on animal sacrifice, the gift, kinship, rituals, festivals and Hindu deities in journals of anthropology, religion and South Asian Studies. My first book, Visceral Politics: Intimate Imaginaries of Power in South India - focusing on the ethnographic elaborations of political theory and the everyday processes of political theorizing - is forthcoming. My second book project involves investigating the resonance of animal sacrifice in contemporary Tamil Nadu, South India and among the Tamil diaspora in Singapore.  

I have a B.Sc (First Class Honours) in Sociology from NUS, a M.Sc (Distinction) and a PhD (Passed as Is) in Anthropology from the London School of Economics and Political Science.  


Teaching Areas

 

ONGOING

SC4228 - Making Sense of Violence 

SC3208 – Religion in Society and Culture

SC3207 – Cultures of Kinship

 

PAST

SC6220 – Conflict/Power in Comparative Perspective

SC4218 – Religion, Secularity and Post-Secularity

SC3205 – Sociology of Power: Who Gets to Rule?


Current Research

 

I am currently working on two projects.  

      (a) Animal sacrifice in contemporary Tamil Nadu, South India and amid the Tamil diaspora in Southeast Asia (especially Singapore) 

      (b) Hindu Astrology in small towns in post-liberalization India 


Research Interests

 

Political Imaginaries, Theologies of Power

Ritual Logics and Practices

Intimate and Public Economics,

Play and Pleasure

Everyday Ethics


Publications

ARTICLES IN JOURNALS

  •  

     

    2024   “The Tamil Festival of Lights: Domesticating the Cosmic and Defending against Elemental Threats”, Society and Culture in South Asia 

    2023     “The Sacred Unbound: Insufficient Rituals, Excess Life and Divine Agency in Rural South India”, Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory. 13 (1): 53-67

    2023     “Countering Killing, Centering Women: Women Sacrificing, Sacred Motherhood and Substantiating Kinship with a Tamil Midwife Goddess”, Anthropological Forum               33 (1): 27-49 

    2023     “Studying Fertility Rituals While Struggling With Infertility”, Anthropology and Humanism, 48 (1): 40-52.

    2022     “Laying Out Feast-Offerings: Offering Meat, Eating Together and Intimate Worship”, Religions of South Asia, 15 (3): 274-299.

    2021     “Touchable Gods: Improvised Icons, Irreverent Rituals and Intimate Kinship with Deities in Village Tamil Nadu”, Religions of South Asia, 19 (2): 230-251.

    2020     “‘Divali is for the Dead!’: Abiding Relatedness and Bittersweet Revelries in a Tamil Nadu Village”, Material Religion, 16 (5): 563-583. 

    2020     “Migrant Deities: Dislocation, Divine Agency and Mediated Manifestations”, American Behavioural Scientist, 16 (5): 1458–1470.   

    2020     “Delighting in Kinship: Women’s Relatedness and Casual Pleasures”, Social Anthropology, 28 (2): 512-526.

    2019     "Coercive Gifts: Ritual and Electoral Transactions and Political Value in Village Tamil Nadu", Contributions to Indian Sociology, 54 (3): 366–391  

    2015     “The Old Gods Are Losing Power!’: Theologies of Power and Rituals of Productivity in a Tamilnadu Village”, Modern Asian Studies 49 (3): 753-786.mas-indira arumugam.pdf

     

    2000     Rudolph, Jurgen & Indira Arumugam, “More Than Meets The Eye: The Political Causes of the Asian Economic Crisis”, The Copenhagen Journal of Asian Studies, 14: 42-73.

     

CHAPTERS IN BOOKS

  •  

     

    Forthcoming    "What Do The Gods Want?", New Questions of Anthropology, London School of Economics Monographs in Anthropology. 

    Forthcoming     "Feral Liaisons: Intimations of Mercurial Deities in Village Tamil Nadu",  Sweetening and Intensification: Currents Shaping Hindu Practices.  Amy L. Allocco and      Xenia Zeiler (eds.), State University of New York Press

     2020   "Gods as Monsters: Insatiable Appetites and A Surfeit of Life". In Geir Henning Presterudstuen & Yamine Musharbash (eds.) Monster Anthropology: Ethnographic                Explorations of Transforming Social Worlds,  London: Bloomsbury Academic, pp.45-58. 

    2002   “The Sociology of Indians”, in Tong Chee Kiong & Lian Kwen Fee (eds.) The Making of Singapore Sociology: Society and State. Singapore: Brill Times                               Academic Press, pp.320-350.

     

    Brief Book Chapters

    2023     “Hunting for Monsters (and Gods): The Making of An Anthropologist”, In Illana Gershon & Yamine Musharbash (eds.) Living With Monsters: Ethnographic Fiction about                   Real Monsters. Goleta, CA: Punctum Press, pp. 113-131.

    2023     “Turmeric and Neem: Sacred Plants, Disease Goddesses and Epidemics in Popular”. In Carola Lorea et al (eds.). CoronAsur: Asian Religions in the Covidian Age!                           University of Hawaii Press.

INVITED: PAPERS FOR SEMINARS, PUBLIC TALK, LECTURE

  • ​​

     

    2023

    • What Do The Gods Want?, New Question in Anthropology, London School of Economics, July 3-4

    2021

    • “Creating Women and Worlds: A Mother/Midwife Goddess, Ritual Production and Reproductive Labour”, Sociology Seminar Series, South Asian University. Nov 17th. 

    2020

    • "Centering Women, Countering Killing: Female-only Sacrifices, A Midwife Goddess and Sacred Motherhood", Seminar on South Asia, Columbia University. Oct 16.
    • "Centering Women, Countering Killing: Female-only Sacrifices, A Midwife Goddess and Sacred Motherhood", South Asia Studies Program, National University of Singapore.

    2019

    • “Desultory Delights: The Pleasures of Kinship in Rural Tamil Nadu”, Love and Survival: Aspiration and Yearning in South Asian Anthropology, Program in South Asian Studies and the Department of Anthropology, Princeton University, March 29.  

     

    2018

    • "Visceral Politics: Kinship, Sacrifice and Constituting a Sovereign Polity”, Kinship and The Caste Frontier, Centre for Modern Indian Studies, University of  Gottingen, Nov 12.

     

    2016

    • “Ritual Transactions and Political Value in Rural Tamil Nadu”, Chicago Tamil Forum, Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago, May 19-21. 

     

    2015

    • “Visceral Politics: Sacrificial Rituals and Political Theorizing in a Tamil Nadu Village”, Centre for the Study of Asia, Boston University and Fairbank Centre for Chinese Studies, Harvard University, Apr 22. 

     

    2014

    • “Visceral Politics: Sacrificial Rituals and Political Theorizing in a Tamil Nadu Village”, South Asian Studies Colloquium, University of Pennsylvania, Dec 4.
    • “Visceral Politics: Sacrificial Rituals and Political Theorizing in a Tamil Nadu Village”, “Producing an Anthropology of Governance”, Forum – Southern Asias: New Research on South and Southeast Asia, Department of Anthropology, Columbia University, Dec 1.

     

     

CONFERENCE PAPERS

  •  


     

    2021

    • “‘Dancing the Deities’: Urban Migration, Altered Mediums and Amplified Mediations in South and Southeast Asia”, 12th International Convention of Asia Scholars (ICAS), Kyoto, 24-27 Aug.
    • “Place Stories and Poiesis – Travelling Rural Goddesses and Transnational Temple-Making”, Transnational Religious Networks in Asia: Alternative Articulations and New Ethnographic Methodologies, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, 4-5 Mar.
    • “Goddess and the City: Women, Worship and Inhabiting/ Creating Religious Worlds”, Urban Religion, Gender and the Body, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, 25-26 Jan.

    2019

    • “‘Dancing the Deities’: Altered Mediums and Amplified Mediations in Tamil Nadu and Singapore”, American Anthropological Association (AAA) Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC, Nov 22.     
    • “Immobilized Deities: Migration, Divine Agency and Mediated Manifestations”, 11th International Convention of Asia Scholars (ICAS), Leiden, Netherlands, July 16.
    • “Migrant Deities: Dislocation, Divine Agency and Mediated Manifestations”, Shaping Migrant and Mobile Worlds: Connectivities, Comparisons, Collaborations, Workshop by FASS Migration Cluster, Department of Sociology and the Shaping Asia Network, National University of Singapore, Feb 21-22.

    2018 

    • “Ritual Capital: Hindu Astrology and Grappling with Perpetual Precarity”, American Anthropological Association (AAA) Annual Meeting, San Jose, California Nov 16.

    2017

    • “Gods and Monsters: Insatiate Divinities and Insufficient Sacrifices in Rural Tamil Nadu”, Living With Monsters, Anthropology Symposium, University of Sydney, Dec 8.

    2016

    • “The Insatiate Sacred: Sacrifice, Volatile Divinities and Vital Life-Forces in a Tamil Nadu Village”, Association of Asian Studies Annual Conference, Seattle,WA, Apr 1.

    2015

    • “Diwali is for the Deceased”: Death, Ritual Memory and Everyday Commemorations in Tamil Nadu”, Centring Mobility in Tamil Worlds: Research Agendas for the 21st  Century, South Asia Studies Programme, National University of Singapore & University of Toronto, Oct 15. 

    2014

    • “The Coercive Gift – Ritual Ethics and Political Values in Village Hinduism”, The Ethics of Religious Giving in Asia: Historical And Ethnographic Explorations, Asia Research  Institute, National University of Singapore, Oct 10.

BOOK REVIEWS

  •  

     

    2011   Review of Anand Pandian’s Crooked Stalks: Cultivating Virtue in South India, Contemporary South Asia 19 (2).

BLOG POSTS

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    10/2022     “Kin But Not Kind: An Anthropologist Among ‘Her People’.” Cultural Anthropology: Member Voices, Fieldsights.                                                                                                 https://culanth.org/fieldsights/kin-but-not-kind-an-anthropologist-among-her-people

    03/ 2022     “Marooned on a Tropical Island; Trying to Write”, Ethnographic Marginalia: Methodological Appendix. https://ethnomarginalia.com/methodological-appendix/

    08/2020     “Do the Gods Have COVID-19 Too?: ‘Worshipping Idols’, Cherishing Deities”, CoronAsur: Religion and COVID-19, Asia Research Institute, NUS

    07/2020     “Turmeric and Neem: Sacred Herbs, Disease Goddesses and Grappling with Epidemics in Popular Hinduism”, CoronAsur: Religion and COVID-19,                                            Asia Research  Institute, NUS. https://ari.nus.edu.sg/20331-31/

     

WORKS IN PROGRESS

  •  

     

    JOURNAL ARTICLES 

    Under Review

    “Relishing Rituals: Play, Pleasure and Festival Revelries in Rural Tamil Nadu”  

    “Ambivalent Adi: Everyday Dilemmas of Fertility, Sterility and Sacrality in a Tamil Month”

    IN PREPARATION

    Co-editing Special Issue in Journal

    with Natalie Lang. “The Body in Urban Rituals”, Religion and Society.   

     

    MONOGRAPH

    Animal Sacrifice: Meanings and Materiality among Tamil Hindus in South and Southeast Asia 

Other Information

 

PROFESSIONAL SERVICE  

2019-2023     Member of Selection Committee, The Claremont Prize for The Study of Religion, The Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life, Columbia University Press

Editorial Board, Suomen: Journal of The Finnish Anthropological Society

 

PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIPS

  • American Anthropological Association (AAA)  
  • International Convention of Asia Scholars (ICAS)
  • Association of Asian Studies (AAS)

 

CONSULTANCIES  

  • 2019             MASTERCARD Southeast Asia

I provided research expertise, in my capacity as an anthropologist, on protection objects and rituals for an advertising campaign towards promoting secure internet banking.   

                     

  • 2013          OnePeople.sg

I instructed members of civil servants on “Indian Cultures in Singapore: Traditions and Transformations” as part of a cultural communication workshop.

 


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