MODERNITY, ETHNICITY AND DEVELOPMENT

This book is a product of engagement that the author has been pursuing with modernity and ethnicity for quite some time now. Although modernity has emerged as a metanarrative in social science literature, its meaning and the possible forms of engagement one can pursue with it has not been adequately explored. Also, it has been uncritically accepted that Europe was the only home of modernity, a point which is contested in this book. The fact that other civilizations have also contributed significantly to the project of modernity needs to be reaffirmed. Contrary to what the classical scholarship (writings of Marx, Durkheim and Weber) argued in favour of weakening of ethnic and nationalist identities in the context of modernity and development, this book seeks to problematize the relationship between modernization and ethnicity both at theoretical and empirical levels by arguing that they have in fact become more salient in the recent past. An adequate discussion on this would need to factor in the critical issue of nationalism, which is attempted here. As an organic and inseparable part of the larger issue of modernity, tribal development, as it is pursued especially in the North-East, is subjected to a critical interrogation. This book would be of great interest to all those who are engaged with issues of modernity, ethnicity and development.