On Transition and Development in India, by Anjan Chakrabarti and Stephen Cullenberg

Abstract

This review of Transition and Development in India addresses two main issues: the book's treatment of the Indian subaltern studies group, and Anjan Chakrabarti and Stephen Cullenberg's reformulation of the Marxian concept of surplus. With regard to the first, this review agrees and disagrees with the authors in that while the subaltern studies group deploys “strategic essentialism,” their project depends on an entry-point of power in a way that is similar to the entry-point of class in the authors’ Marxian analysis. In addition, this review analyzes the theoretical importance of the book's focus on an ethics of development. The authors reformulate the very concept of surplus produced in each and every economic site to include a global imperative to sustain all who live in a “realm of need.” This reformulation has profound impacts on many different arenas of social thought including Marxism and development economics.

Keywords:

• Subaltern Studies
• Surplus
• Marxism
• Development
• Ethics

Notes

¹See Kayatekin (2001) for an insightful analysis on how elaborating various political and legal conditions of existence changes the way we theorize sharecroppers.