Nationalism and Cultural Practice in the Postcolonial World

Book excerpt: In this wide-ranging study, Neil Lazarus explores the subject of cultural practice in the modern world system. The book contains individual chapters on a range of topics from modernity, globalization and the 'West', and nationalism and decolonization, to cricket and popular consciousness in the English-speaking Caribbean. Lazarus analyses social movements, ideas and cultural practices that have migrated from the 'First world' to the 'Third world' over the course of the twentieth century. Nationalism and Cultural Practice in the Postcolonial World offers an enormously erudite reading of culture and society in today's world and includes extended discussion of the work of such influential writers, critics and activists as Frantz Fanon, C. L. R. James, Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak, Samir Amin, Raymond Williams, Paul Gilroy and Partha Chatterjee. This book is a politically focused, materialist intervention into postcolonial and cultural studies, and constitutes a major reappraisal of the debates on politics and culture in these fields.