Herrenschmidt Olivier
Ethnology
Laboratory of Ethnology and Comparative Sociology (LESC)
France
Biography
Olivier Herrenschmidt is centring his research on the ethnographic experience. Since 1999, he has been regularly repeating earlier field studies, enabling him to update information collected from 1963 to 1982, and making him a special witness to the changes that have so deeply marked the past fifty years. Although sea fishermen castes of the coast of Andhra Pradesh continue to be central to his study – especially the Vada Balija caste – his enquiry has extended to all castes of the village of Pentakota (a reference village in the Visakhapatnam district), with special attention to the dominant Kapu/Telaga caste.
Research Interest
Sea fishermen’s societies, religious anthropology, kinship systems (particularly Dravidian), Dr B.R. Ambedkar and the untouchables of contemporary India
Publications
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2009, The Indians’ impossible Civil Code, Archives européennes de sociologie, L (2): 309–347.
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2010, Un ethnologue mécontent et heureux. 18e conférence Robert Hertz de l’APRAS, le 18 juin 2010, lettre d’information de l’APRAS, n° 46 (automne 2010) http://web.mae.u-paris10.fr/apras/.
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2011, Il est bon de savoir quelque chose des mœurs de divers peuples, in F. Pouillon and J.-C. Vatin (eds), Après l’Orientalisme, l’Orient créé par l’Orient (Paris, IISMM-Karthala): 253–265.
