Gananath Obeyesekere is emeritus professor of anthropology at Princeton University and has done much work in his home country of Sri Lanka.
His research focuses on psychoanalysis and anthropology and the ways in which personal symbolism is related to religious experience, in addition to the European exploration of Polynesia in the 18th century and after, and the implications of these voyages for the development of ethnography.
[1] His books include Land Tenure in Village Ceylon, Medusa's Hair,[2] The Cult of the Goddess Pattini,[3] Buddhism Transformed (coauthor), The Work of Culture, The Apotheosis of Captain Cook: European Mythmaking in the Pacific, and Making Karma.
[7] Obeyesekere has received several academic awards, including the Thomas H. Huxley medal by the Royal Anthropological Institute in recognition of his scholarly contributions to the discipline.
Obeyesekere insisted that indigenous people thought in essentially the same way as Westerners and was concerned that any argument otherwise would paint them as "irrational" and "uncivilized".