Content area
Full Text
Wages of Freedom: Fifty Years of the Indian Nation-State
Partha Chatterjee (ed)
Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998
ISBN 0 19 564524 3
Recent years have seen a significant enrichment of the theoretical depth of Indian political and social analysis, inspired both by revised disciplinary perspectives-most notably, the work of the Subaltern Studies collective-and by contemporary political changes. This volume, edited by one of the most outstanding of such recent theorists, brings together both seasoned analysts and new contributors from the fields of social, cultural and political analysis in a solid collection of essays that examine the experience of post-colonial democracy and nationalist modenity.
Partha Chatterjee's editorial introduction sketches a contribution to the debate on civil society, lucidly explaining a framework that incorporates a domain of political society mediating between the elite institutions of nationalist civil society and the state. While underlining a concern with governance and power which underpins all of the essays, Chatterjee suggests a new...