Stanley Jeyaraja Tambiah
He then became interested in the comparative study of the ways Western categories of magic, science and religion have been used by anthropologists to make sense of other cultures which do not use this three-part system.After the outbreak of civil war in Sri Lanka, he began to study the role of competing religious and ethnic identities in that country.[5] In November 1997, Tambiah received the prestigious Balzan Prize[3] for "penetrating social-anthropological analysis of the fundamental problems of ethnic violence in South East Asia and original studies on the dynamics of Buddhist societies [that] have opened the way to an innovative and rigorous social-anthropological approach to the internal dynamics of different civilizations".[6] A month later, the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland awarded him its highest recognition,[7] the Huxley Memorial Medal and Lecture.[9] In 2000, he became a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy,[10] a title given to those who have "attained high international standing" in a discipline in the humanities or social sciences.