Denis Vidal

Vidal has been exploring India since his doctoral studies. Some of his research works on India include the "archival exploration" of Sirohi State and his studies on the "economic organisation of the bazaar", the social and religious anthropology of the Himalayas, and "visual culture of the old city of Delhi". He delved into the disputed contest over the patent rights of Basmati rice between India and the United States. Vidal has also explored "new ways of approaching technology from an anthropological perspective". In 2019, Vidal, along with D. Balasubramanian, carried out a study on the building of wooden cargo ships in India's Tamil Nadu.

Vidal has been one of the curators of the exhibition Persona (Musée du Quai Branly, Paris, January - October 2016, ,and of the permanent exhibition on robotics at the Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie, Paris (opening in April 2019)

for various reviews of this book, see Norbert Peabody ,Christophe Jaffrelot, Frank de Zwart, Ajay Skaria Skaria(August 1999). And for an indepth study of it see Lawrence Babb, 2004

Vidal's Violence and Truth: A Rajasthani Kingdom Confronts Colonial Authority (1995) was a study of history of the Sirohi State, focusing mainly on the influence exerted by British values and legal system on politics and society in Sirohi during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, providing "a vivid picture of caste-specific protest repertory". Vidal's study shed light on the relationship between the rulers of Sirohi and the Jain merchants with regard to the "colonial idea of economy"; inquired into the relationship between violence and mutineers in Rajasthan and how it was "remade through the colonial encounter"; and explored the Gandhian thought in apropos of the British colonial laws in India.

Vidal completed his Ph.D. in 1983 at the EPHE and the University of Nanterre, under the supervision of Charles Malamoud [fr], with a doctoral thesis titled 'Le Culte des Divinités Locales dans une Région de l'Himachal Pradesh (The Cult of Local Divinities in a Region of Himachal Pradesh)'.

Denis Vidal (born 4 July 1954) is a French anthropologist with a doctorate degree from the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes and the Université de Nanterre. He is an associate professor at the EHESS School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences and a senior research fellow (Directeur de recherche) at the Institut de recherche pour le développement.