The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Princeton Studies in Culture/Power/History)

Thoughtful, erudite, relevant for broader contexts, including the radical Islamic emergence in response to western multinational psedo-colonialism. Good read.

this is a classic read, and important for scholars of colonialism to read. However the theory and methods are a bit outdated now, and this book should be seen as an artifact of it's period, and not as a model for fresh research. Very dense and academic.

Chatterjee is a typical `postmodern' scholar, and he has a rather jargon-filled and oblique writing style. In some cases, knowledge of Indian and Bengali history, to say nothing of familiarity with contemporary Bengali society and the intricacies of the caste system, would seem to be required to truly understand certain sections of this book. Also, while Chatterjee states that his argument is meant to clarify (to some extent) the conditions of nations, nationalism and society/communities in the postcolonial states of Asia and Africa, his examination is almost exclusively restricted to Bengal in India. There is nothing wrong with this as such, since he deals with the area with which he is most familiar. However, one of his principal underlying themes is a (rather persuasive) criticism of European or `Western' scholars for mis-applying European philosophies and sociological models to non-European, postcolonial societies, and he seems to commit the same error by assuming that his Bengali example can be used to explain circumstances in the vast, diverse lands from the western shores of Africa to southeast Asia.Nevertheless, "The Nation and Its Fragments" is a very strong argument against simply assuming that nationalism, postcolonial development, industrialization and modernity itself in India (or elsewhere in the so-called `Third World') are simply following `models' already formulated in Europe/America. Chatterjee's most important point is perhaps his call for scholarship on postcolonial societies to commence from completely different fundamental assumptions, rather than trying to force upon it outside (read European) `scientific' models.