"Bengal in Global Concept History: Culturalism in the Age of Capital" by Andrew Sartori

This book provides an authoritative account of the history of colonial and postcolonial Bengali intellectual life and the nationalist movement. This remarkable interdisciplinary study will be of significant interest to historians and anthropologists, as well as scholars of South Asia and colonialism.


In this ambitious study, Andrew Sartori closely examines the history of political and intellectual life in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Bengal to show how the concept can take on a life of its own in different contexts.
Sartori weaves the narrative of Bengal’s embrace of culturalism into a worldwide history of the concept, from its origins in eighteenth-century Germany, through its adoption in England in the early 1800s, to its appearance in distinct local guises across the non-Western world.

Contents
Acknowledgments
Chapter One. Bengali "Culture" as a Historical Problem
Chapter Two. Culture as a Global Concept
Chapter Three. Bengali Liberalism and British Empire
Chapter Four. Hinduism as Culture
Chapter Five. The Conceptual Structure of an Indigenist Nationalism
Chapter Six. Reification, Purification, and Radicalization
Conclusion. Universalistic Particularisms and Parochial Cosmopolitanisms
Notes
Index