Researcher at the CNRS
Contact:
UPR 299 Centre d'Etudes Himalayennes, CNRS
7 rue Guy Môquet
94800 Villejuif CEDEX
France
E-mail: dberti@vjf.cnrs.fr
Personal website: http://daniela.berti.free.fr/
A social anthropologist and researcher at the CNRS, she carries out research on the Himachal Pradesh region, in North India. She has worked on the linguistic procedures in dialogues that take place during possession rituals and on what gives effectiveness to this particular type of utterance. Other work has covered the following themes: development of the divine iconography; rewriting of regional history by local elites; correspondence between ritual territories and political territories; adoption by state institutions of politico-ritual practices associated with kinship in the past; cultural entrenchment of Hindu nationalism at regional level. Her current research focuses on the ethnography of criminal cases and of District and High courts in India.
She coordinated the programme ATIP-Jeunes Chercheurs The Cultural Entrenchment of Hindutva. Local Mediations and Forms of Resistance alongside Nicolas Jaoul. She is currently jointly coordinating the research programme Justice and Governance in India and South Asia (JUST-INDIA), which is funded by the French National Research Agency, with Gilles Tarabout.
Key words: ritual, possession, kinship, politics, territory, writing about the past, judiciary proceedings, court ethnography, criminal cases.
Fieldwork: India (Himachal Pradesh)
Recent publications:
2011. "Courts of Law and Legal Practice". In I. Clark-Deces (ed) A Companion to the Anthropology of India, pp. 355-370. Oxford, Maiden. Blackwell Publishing.
2011. "Trials, Witnesses and Local Stakes in a District Court of Himachal Pradesh (North India)". In J. Pfaff and G. Toffin (eds.) Citizenship, Democracy, and Belonging in the Himalayas, pp. 290-313. Sage: New Delhi.
2011, "The local enactment of Hindutva Writing stories on local gods in Himachal Pradesh". in D. Berti, N. Jaoul & P. Kanungo (dir.), The Cultural Entrenchment of Hindutva. Local Mediations and Forms of Resistance, pp. 64-90. Delhi, Routledge.
2011. "Political Patronage and Ritual Competitions at the Dashera Festival in Northern India". In C. Brosius and K. Polit (eds.). Ritual, Heritage and Identity, pp. 126-148. Delhi: Sage.
2010. "Hostile Witnesses, Judicial Interactions and Out-of-Court Narratives in a North Indian District Court". In Contributions to Indian Sociology, vol. 44, 3, pp. 235-263.
2009. (eds. with Gilles Tarabout) Territory, Soil and Society in the South Asia. New Delhi, Manohar.
2009 Kings, Gods, and Political Leaders in Kullu. In M. Lecomte-Tilouine (ed.). Bards and Mediums: History, Culture, and Politics in the Central Himalayan Kingdoms, pp. 107-136. Almora: Almora Book Depot.
2009. "Passé, localité et nationalismes dans la région de Kullu (Inde du Nord)". G. Krauskopff Les faiseurs d'histoire : Politique de l'origine et écrits sur le passé, pp.111-140. Nanterre: Société d'Ethnologie.
2007. "Hindu Nationalists and Local History: From Ideology to Local Lore". In Rivista di Studi Sudasiatici, vol. 2, pp. 5-36.
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