Although my undergraduate training was in Sociology, my research interests soon switched to anthropology. Even my BA dissertation research was related to anthropology in that I wrote my thesis on “Kinship System and Its Changes in Jaffna Society: A Social Anthropological Study based on Inuvil Village”. However, Sri Lankan sociology is not “pure sociology,” because it cannot be disentangled from anthropology and thus both are well interwoven and intersected in teaching and research. My research passion for anthropology sprang directly from my life in Jaffna. While in Jaffna, I was always happy to listen to my grandmother when she told me village folk tales and religious myths. I was so drawn to these stories that they made me explore more of village and temple life. She also took me for village walks in the evenings during which we would meet many relatives and village people. She took me to the Ganesh temple in Inuvil every Friday evening where I saw middle aged and elderly women coming to light oil lamps for the deities. Later, I heard that the reason for this practice was to pray for prosperity and healthy births. In particular, though, I am in debt to my grandmother for taking me to so many Hindu temples in Jaffna whenever she could. Her wonderful teaching paved the way for me to learn the many ‘sacred-geographies’ of the Jaffna peninsula. Thus, I was socialized by a form of religious life during my childhood and after. Later, I found that my grandmother’s philosophical sense of how to analyze human, non-human, and non-living objects provided a very useful grounding for understanding the “ontological paradigm” in anthropology; a remarkable turning point in anthropology that has revised my anthropological understanding of the world. In this regard, I was also inspired by Geertz’s interpretive anthropology and by the application of Wittgenstein’s philosophy to anthropology, something I learned throughout my Ph.D. training from Professor. Mark P. Whitaker, my dissertation advisor.
As a cultural anthropologist, I always focus on the intersections of caste, ethnicity, religion, consciousness, nationalism, place, and global communication technologies among the Tamils of Northern Sri Lanka. My ethnographic fieldwork has been primarily in Sri Lanka, India and Rome. In India, for example, I obtained ethnographic research experience among the Badagas, Malayalis and Kotas “tribal” people of South India while studying for my MA degree. For my MA dissertation research, I looked at how kinship and social organization worked among the Kotas of the Nilgiri District of Tamil Nadu. Earlier, I was trained in Bharatanatyam and Carnatic music for 12 years in Jaffna, and gained both theoretical and practical knowledge of those performing arts. Later, while I had to limit my practice of the performing arts as such, I turned to the field of ethnomusicology (the anthropology of music) to continue my association with them. Hence, while pursuing my MA in anthropology at the University of Madras, I also studied ethnomusicology with the Late Professor S.A. K. Durga, who urged me to further explore Tamil musicology and dance. As a result, I also eventually conducted an ethnomusicological study of Periya Melam musicians in Jaffna.
For my Ph.D. dissertation research, I conducted long-term ethnographic research in two different war-affected villages in the Jaffna Peninsula of Sri Lanka. To engage in this study of post-war village community reconstruction, I received a Doctoral Research Grant from the National Science Foundation, USA. As someone who lived through the war in the region and has returned as an ethnographer, I looked at how post-war Tamil villages can be recognized as having a heterogenous reality made and remade through the multiple activities and narratives of the villagers themselves. I focused on how their memory of or nostalgia for their Tamil ūr (village) consciousness as it existed in the recent pre-war past, was being used in the present for the reconstruction of communities affected or destroyed by the war. The resulting ethnography of the role of ‘place-making’ in community rebuilding in Jaffna illuminated the more general issue of how communities anywhere after war must reconstitute themselves not just as physical locations but also as places in which people can once again truly feel at home.
While pursuing my Ph.D. studies, I also conducted research on “Contemporary New Religious Movements” with Dr. Mark P. Whitaker or, as we said in a 2015 conference paper, on “New Religious Sites, New Gods, and Choices among the Post-war Tamils in Sri Lanka”. I also administered an international workshop on Innovative Religiosity in Post-war Sri Lanka, funded by National Science Foundations (USA) and Wenner-Gren foundation from grants obtained by my PhD advisor, Mark P. Whitaker. This workshop took place at the Open University of Sri Lanka. Again with Mark P. Whitaker, in 2017, I conducted joint research on Innovative Religiosity in Post-war Sri Lanka. In 2018 I conducted additional research at multi-religious sites through-out Sri Lanka with Mark P. Whitaker and Dr. Darini Rajasingham Senanayake. Subsequently, the three of us edited the papers presented at the 2017 Open University workshop with an eye toward publishing them in an edited volume. After further revisions in light of our discussions then and since, these papers now form chapters of a hybrid volume focusing on every day, innovative, interactive, and multiple religiosity among Sri Lankan Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Christians, and devotees of Contemporary New Religious Movements. This edited volume, Multi-religiosity in Contemporary Sri Lanka: Innovation, Shared Spaces, Contestation, is due out from Routledge this year.
Mark P. Whitaker and Sanmugeswaran, P. 2021. Searching for Cakti (Shakti): New choices in post-war Tamil Sri Lanka. In Multi religiosity in Contemporary Sri Lanka: Innovation, Shared Spaces, and Contestation, eds. Mark P. Whitaker, Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake and Pathmanesan Sanmugeswaran. Oxford: Routledge (Taylor and Francis Group Publishers)
Sanmugeswaran, P. (2020) Maximizing the Potential of Multidisciplinary Social Sciences in Empowering People through ODL Methodologies. VISTAS- Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, The Open University of Sri Lanka, Volume-13 (2): 47-67.
Sanmugeswaran, P. (2020) A Review of Postcolonial Scholarship: Conducting Research on Culture and Society, Prathimana: Journal of the Department of Sociology, University of Ruhuna, Volume-12: pp.146-184.
Sanmugeswaran, P., Krishantha, F., and Justin, H. (2019) Reclaiming Ravana in Sri Lanka: Ravana’s Sinhala Buddhist Apotheosis and Tamil Responses, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, Volume: 42, Issue: 4, pp. 796-812.
Sanmugeswaran, P. (2016). The Role of Communication Strategy in Tribal Development Research: The Case of Malayali Tribal Community in Tamil Nadu, South India, VISTAS- Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, the Open University of Sri Lanka, Volume-10, December 2016, ISSN 1391-7943
Sanmugeswaran, P. (2016). Cosmopolitanism, Migration, and Transnationalism: An Interview with Nina Glick Schiller (Co-author with Lauren Copeland and Agata Grzelczak), disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory, University of Kentucky, Vol-25, May 2016, Article-17, pp.181-192
Sanmugeswaran, P.(2012).Thavil Master of V.Thadchinãmurthy: An Ethnomusicological Analysis of the Contribution of a Tamil Musician, Under Construction: Trans- and Interdisciplinary Routes in Music Research, Wewers, Julia and Seifert, Uwe (Ed) epOs-Music, Studies in Cognitive Musicology, Vol-1, pp. 159-176, Universitat Osnabrück 2012, ISBN 978-3-940255-32-7
Sanmugeswaran, P.(2012). Sri Lankan Immigrants in the City of Rome: A Sociological Study on Migration and Livelihood Nexus, The International Journal’s Research Journal of Social Science and Management, Singapore, Volume-1, Number-12, April 2012, pp 32-39 Old ISSN- 2010-257X, New ISSN-2251-1571, Available at http://www.theinternationaljournal.org/
Sanmugeswaran, P. (2010). A Social Anthropological Analysis of a Temple-Centered Community: Jaffna in Northern Sri Lanka”, a volume of the Annual Research Conference, the University of Jaffna, Sri Lanka, 2010, ISBN: 978-955- 0585-01-04.
Sanmugeswaran, P.. (2010). Migration as a Livelihood Option of the Poor: A Study of the Sri Lankan Immigrants in the City of Rome, Immigrants in Rome: Case Studies of selected Immigrant communities and Issues prepared by graduates of the 2nd International Course on Applied Anthropology in Development Processes, Paolo Palmeri (ed), published by Nuova Cultura, Roma, 2010, ISBN: 9788861344402.
Sanmugeswaran, P. (2009) Ethnic Conflict, Displacement, and Poverty in Sri Lanka: A Sociological Investigation VISTAS- Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, The Open University of Sri Lanka, Volume-5, December 2009, ISSN 1391-7943
