Vivek Chibber

Vivek Chibber
Vivek Chibber at the 8th Subversive Film Festival in Zagreb, Croatia on May 14 2015
Occupation	Professor
Academic background
Education	Ph.D.
Alma mater	University of Wisconsin, Madison, Northwestern University
Thesis	Locked in place: State building and the failure of industrial policy in India, 1940–1970 (1999)
Doctoral advisor	Erik Olin Wright
Academic work
Discipline	Sociologist
Sub-discipline	Historical sociology, Economic sociology, Political sociology, Marxism
Institutions	New York University
Main interests	Economic sociology, sociology of development, Marxian theory, political sociology, comparative-historical sociology, social theory

Vivek Chibber is an American academic, Marxist theorist, editor and professor of sociology at New York University.

He is the author of two books, and a contributor to New Left Review. In his second book, he argued that postcolonial studies are based on three false premises. His analysis is based on critiques of the works of Ranajit Guha and Dipesh Chakrabarty to argue that false analyses of Indian and European history lead to false premises of Subaltern Studies . He argues for universalism.

Early Life and Career

Chibber was born in India, and moved to United States where he did his B.A (Political Science) in 1987 from Northwestern University. Later he did his Ph.D. in Sociology in 1999 from University of Wisconsin, where his dissertation was supervised by Erik Olin Wright.

After his studies, he has served with various publications and journals. He currently serves as the co-editor of Socialist Register for which he was a Member Editorial Collective from 2003-2006 and Advisory Editor from 2006-2008. He is also an Advisory Editor to Journal of Agrarian Change (starting from 2000) and Journal of Historical Materialism (starting from 2002).

Previously, he has served as an Advisory Editor to numerous journals including American Journal of Sociology (2007-2009), The Journal of Peasant Studies (1999-2000), British Journal of Sociology (2008-2013) and Sociological Theory (2009-14). He has also been a member of Editorial Board of Journal of Politics & Society (2003 –2008).

Criticism of Postcolonialism

According to Chibber, the sociological concept at the heart of Postcolonial Theory is that of "difference" . Postcolonialism, he argues, challenges the view of liberal and radical Enlightenment that both East and West are subject to similar laws of motion, historical forces, needs and aspirations. As a consequence, Postcolonial theorists conclude that the theoretical frameworks and social categories of the West can't be applied to the East. Postcolonials insist that Capitalism has globalized the world, but hasn't universalized it, hence the Capitalism in the East is not the same as that in the West. Postcolonial arguments, he goes on, can be summarized into three points:

1. Liberal bourgeoise: Real Capitalism should have a liberal bourgeoise, as seen in English and French revolutions. In those countries, liberal bourgeoise gained power, overthrew ancien régime and put in place new forms of state which were characterized by liberalism (political order based on the consent of those governed). This happened in the West, but not in the East where bourgeois continues to be illiberal, ruling by outright domination and coercion.
3. Capitalism's reliance on coercion: Real capitalism has forms of power, governance and class relations that rely on formal equality and rule of law. Eastern Capitalism relies on inter-personal coercion (traditional hierarchies, caste system and so on). Capitalist in the East, other than extracting surplus economically, also do it politically through indentured servitude, quasi-slavery, punishments and so on.
5. Transformation of all social relations: Real Capitalism revolutionizes all social relations: culture, ideology, social mores. But in East there is persistence of all sorts of traditional practices: religiosity instead of secularism; superstition instead of science.

All these non-transformations, postcolonialism says, point to the idea of fundamental "difference", hence western categories like Political Economy, Marxism and Liberalism have no purchase in the East. Not only are they irrelevant to the realities of the East, they are also a hindrance in seeing the reality and should therefore be abandoned; thus abandoning universalism and adopting localism.

Chibber answers these arguments by analyzing the historical transformation of Europe:

Liberal bourgeoise

Chibber refutes the postcolonial idea that it was liberal bourgeoise that brought liberal democratic values. In Chibber's analysis, the bourgeoise of England and France pursued the very illiberal, undemocratic and coercive ways that are today found in the Global South. According to him, the democratization and liberalization didn't come from the top, but by two-centuries of long struggles by the masses who extracted Civil and political rights away from the ruling class against its resistance. In other words, the illiberal bourgeoise that we today see in the Global South is not a deviation from a historical pattern, but a following of the norm.

Capitalism's reliance on coercion

Here again, Chibber argues that as long as it could, Capitalism in the West relied on interpersonal coercion all the way into 20th Century. These include indentured servitude, company towns, personal bondage, use of private militia could be seen in advanced capitalist countries like United States. Hence the observation of Eastern capitalist coercion as a departure from norm is a profound mistake.

Transformation of all social relations

Chibber argues that if the postcolonial claim that capitalism transforms all social relations, is right then all advanced capitalist countries should look the same in terms of society, culture, norms, practices and beliefs. He points to surveys showing the level of superstition in Europe: 70% of Americans claiming they see angels, 50% consult astrologers; 60% calling themselves fundamentally religious and about half of Americans thinking Evolution is just a theory. Chibber concludes that Capitalism does not transform all social practices, neither in the East nor in the West. The only thing it fundamentally changes is the economy, and Capitalist countries can have vastly different cultures and psyches while sharing the same model of economy. He admits that economic transformation does indeed bring politico-cultural changes, but these changes are different in different countries.

Awards

• Distinguished Publication Award, American Sociological Association 2006, honorable mention.
• Barrington Moore Jr. Prize, American Sociological Association 2005.
• Selected as Outstanding Academic Title in 2004, Choice Magazine
• Mirra Komarovsky Award, Eastern Sociological Association 2005, honorable mention
• Distinguished publication award, Political Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association 2004, for best book in Political Sociology, honorable mention.

Bibliography

Books

• Locked in Place: State-Building and Late Industrialization in India. Princeton University Press. 2003. p. 334. ISBN 0691126232.
• Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital. London: Verso. 2013. p. 256. ISBN 1844679764.

Journal Entries

• "Confronting Postcolonial Theory – A Response to Critics". The Journal of World Systems Research. 20 (Winter 2014, ): 308-314.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link)
• "Making Sense of Postcolonial Studies – A Response to Gayatri Spivak". Cambridge Review of International Affairs. 27, no. 3 (September 2014).
• "Revisiting Subaltern Studies". The Economic and Political Weekly. XLIX, no. 9. March 1, 2014.
• "The ghost of theories past". The European Journal of Sociology (December 2013): 439-449.

See also

• Partha Chatterjee
• Dipesh Chakrabarty
• Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital

External links

• Link at Amazon
• Talk on Postcolonial Theory
• Debate with Partha Chatterjee
• Radio Interview about Bernie Sanders
• Interview about Dalit Movement