Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism

Twenty years ago, in the pages of the, Journal of Common Market Studies, Hedley Bull launched a searing critique of the European Community's "civilian power" in international affairs. Since that time the increasing role of the European Union (EU) in areas of security and defence policy has led to a seductiveness in adopting the notion of "military power Europe". In contrast, I will attempt to argue that by thinking beyond traditional conceptions of the EU's international role and examining the case study of its international pursuit of the abolition of the death penalty, we may best conceive of the EU as a "normative power Europe".

Normative Power Europe: A Contradiction in Terms?

In this exploratory article, we ask how states come to be understood as entities with particular spatial characteristics, and how changing relations between practices of government and national territories may be challenging long-established modes of state spatiality. In the first part of this article, we seek to identify two principles that are key to state spatialization: vertically (thestate is "above"society) andencompassm ent (thestate "encompasses" its localities). We use ethnographic evidence from a maternal health project in India to illustrate our argument that perceptions of verticality and encompassment are produced through routine bureaucratic practices. In the second part, we develop a concept of transnational governmentality as a way of grasping how new practices of government and new forms of "grassroots" politics may call into question the principles of vertical ity and encompassment that have long helped to legitimate and naturalize states' authority over "the local." [states, space, governmentality, globalization, neoliberalism, India, Africa] Recent years have seen a new level of anthropological concern with the modern

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Spatializing States: Toward an Ethnography of Neoliberal Governmentality

In this article I attempt to do an ethnography of the state by examining the discourses of corruption in contemporary India. I focus on the practices of lower levels of the bureaucracy in a small north Indian town as well as on representations of the state in the mass media. Research on translocal institutions such as “the state” enables us to reflect on the limitations of participant-observation as a technique of fieldwork. The analysis leads me to question Eurocentric distinctions between state and civil society and offers a critique of the conceptualization of “the state” as a monolithic and unitary entity. [the state, public culture, fieldwork, discourse, corruption, India]

blurred boundaries: the discourse of corruption, the culture of politics, and the imagined state

The essential introduction to the most important texts in post-colonial theory and criticism, this second edition has been thoroughly revised and updated to include 121 extracts from key works in the field. Leading, as well as lesser known figures in the fields of writing, theory and criticism contribute to this inspiring body of work that includes sections on nationalism, hybridity, diaspora and globalization. The Reader's wide-ranging approach reflects the remarkable diversity of work in the discipline along with the vibrancy of anti-imperialist writing both within and without the metropolitan centres. Covering more debates, topics and critics than any comparable book in its field, The Post-Colonial Studies Reader is the ideal starting point for students and issues a potent challenge to the ways in which we think and write about literature and culture.

The Post-Colonial Studies Reader

Preface and AcknowledgmentsCh. 1Whose Imagined Community?3Ch. 2The Colonial State14Ch. 3The Nationalist Elite35Ch. 4The Nation and Its Pasts76Ch. 5Histories and Nations95Ch. 6The Nation and Its Women116Ch. 7Women and the Nation135Ch. 8The Nation and Its Peasants158Ch. 9The Nation and Its Outcasts173Ch. 10The National State200Ch. 11Communities and the Nation220Notes241Bibliography263Index273

The nation and its fragments : colonial and postcolonial histories

Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse

PrefaceThe Leonard Hastings Schoff Memorial Lectures 2001The Nation in Heterogeneous TimePopulations and Political SocietyThe Politics of the GovernedGlobal/Local: Before and After September 11The Great PeaceBattle HymnThe Contradictions of SecularismAre Indian Cities Becoming Bourgeois At Last?Bibliography

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The Politics of the Governed: Reflections on Popular Politics in Most of the World

Colonial texts condemned the treatment of women in India by identifying a scriptural tradition. The nationalist response was to construct a reformed tradition and defend it on the grounds of modernity. In the process, it created the image of a new woman who was superior to Western women, traditional Indian women and low-class women. This new patriarchy invested women with the dubious honor of representing a distinctively modern national culture. [Colonial discourse, nationalism, gender construction, cultural modernity]

Partha Chatterjee

Papers

The nation and its fragments : colonial and postcolonial histories

Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse

The Politics of the Governed: Reflections on Popular Politics in Most of the World

colonialism, nationalism, and colonialized women: the contest in India

The nationalist resolution of the women's question