The Post-Colonial State – Tariq Amin-Khan

THE POST-COLONIAL STATE – TARIQ AMIN-KHAN

Global Capitalism

 

http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415891592/ New book on the Post-Colonial State: Tariq Amin-Khan, The Post-Colonial State in the Era of Capitalist Globalization: Historical, Political and Theoretical Approaches to State Formation. New York: Routledge, 2012. ISBN 978-0-415-89159-2.  State formation in post-colonial societies differed greatly from the formation of the Western capitalist state. The latter has been extensively studied, while a coherent grasp of the post-colonial state – despite the recent ethnographical explorations – has remained elusive. Amin-Khan provides a critical, historical and contemporary understanding of post-colonial state formations in Asia andAfrica, and articulates how this process differed for Latin American states.  A common signifier of the post-colonial state is the retention of the unitary colonial state structure by its ruling classes. This legacy has reinscribed the colonial-era social relations in post-colonial societies, and consolidated the power of the ‘overdeveloped’ civil and military bureaucracy. At the same time, the US was able to remove ‘nationalist’ leadership in Africa and Asia to create client post-colonial states that have remained beholden to Western states, transnational corporations and international financial institutions. The analysis of these developments shows that the vast majority of post-colonial states have remained proto-capitalist – with feudal landholders and bureaucratic elite having a stranglehold on state power. In contrast, those few countries (India, South Africa and others) that have emerged as capitalist post-colonial states have been able to partly shake off the colonial legacy and loosen the noose of imperialist domination. The final two chapters ground theory by concretely analyzing the nature and development trajectories of the states of India and Pakistan as two distinct examples respectively of capitalist and proto-capitalist states – which can be generalized as the two state forms prevalent in post-colonial societies.

Original source: http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/news/distributed/now-out-tariq-amin-khan-the-post-colonial-state-in-the-era-of-capitalist-globalization

**END**

‘Human Herbs’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

‘Stagnant’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkP_Mi5ideo  

 

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com