Author: Partha Chatterjee
Publisher: Permanent Black
Year: 2004
Language: English
Pages: 173
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8178240971
Description
Often dismissed as rumblings of the street, popular politics is where political modernity is being formed today, argues Partha Chatterjee. The rise of mass politics across the world has led to the development of new techniques of governing population groups. On the one hand, the idea of popular sovereignty has gained wide acceptance. On the other, the proliferation of security and welfare technologies has created modern governmental bodies that administer populations but do not provide citizens with an arena for democratic deliberation. Under these conditions, democracy is no loner government of, by, and for the people. Rather, it has become a world of power whose startling dimensions and unwritten rules of engagement Chatterjee provocatively lays bare.
He argues that the rise of ethnic or identity politics-particularly in the postcolonial world-is a consequence of these new techniques of governmental administration. Using contemporary examples, Chatterjee examines the different forms taken by the politics of the governed, many of which operate outside the traditionally defined arena of civil society and the formal legal institutions of State. Looking at the global conditions within which such local forms have appeared, he shows us how both community and global society have been transformed.
The major book by one of the modern world’s most eminent political theorists provides a new perspective on the limits and possibilities of democracy in contemporary times.
Contents
PREFACE
PART I: THE LEONARD HASTINGS SCHOFF MEMORIAL LECTURES 2001
ONE
The Nation in Heterogeneous Time
TWO
Populations and Political Society
THREE
The Politics of the Governed
PART II: GLOBAL/LOCAL : BEFORE AND AFTER SEPTEMBER
FOUR
The World After the Great Peace
FIVE
Battle Hymn
SIX
The Contradictions of Secularism
SEVEN
Are Indian Cities Becoming Bourgeois At Last?
Afterword
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Photographs appear as an insert following page