| COMMENTARIES AND BOOK REVIEWS A COMMENTARY ON 'CORPORATE CAPITALISM IN CONTEMPORARY SOUTH-ASIA' R. Murga Perumal Issue 28 (Vol. 14, No. 2), December 2004, pp. 205-213. Corporate Capitalism in Contemporary South Asia: Conventional Wisdoms and South Asian Realities (2003, 199 pp.) is a collection of essays edited by Anaya Mukherjee Reed, and is published as a part of the International Political Economy Series by Palgrave Macmillan. The book includes a range of articles which focus on corporate economies in South Asia from a contemporary and comparative perspective. The individual articles deal with different issues, which include general conceptual issues on corporate capitalism common to the region as a whole and issues that are specific to different major countries of the region namely Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. A socio-historical approach is taken to study the corporate economies of the region, their relations with more common issues like globalization, state, etc, and region specific issues like ��caste�� and so on. At the very outset the editor emphasizes the context of war on terror and the experiments of globalization and domestic reforms in South Asia and the ensuing uncertainties in order to underscore the significance of this work. The editor points out various false dichotomies that dominate the developmental discussions in South Asia and claims that this work endeavours to move beyond them in several ways. Particular emphasis is made to the diverse approach taken by different authors of this work. Such an approach is aimed at questioning a set of conventional wisdoms about South Asia in order to arrive at a comparative and contextually specific analysis of the politics of accumulation in South Asia. Moreover, the book also aims at making a modest contribution to some future issues concerning the changes occurring in corporate economies in South Asia as a result of war on terror. |