THE POLITICS OF DESPAIR AND THE CALLING OF HISTORY

What happens to history as a set of practices and intellectual protocols when the assumed subject of our historical narratives is not a product of the European Enlightenment? Such has been the question motivating much of Dipesh Chakrabarty's work for almost thirty years. This essay offers a largely chronological account of Chakrabarty's major works. It begins with his first book, published in 1989, which provided a culturalist account of working‐class history in Bengal. It then tracks his movement in the early 1990s toward a position positing radical disjuncture and even incommensurability between the worlds of Indian subalterns and Western moderns, and his subsequent attempts to soften and blur precisely this kind of disjuncture. Meditating on the problems posed by the experiences of subjects who did not live within the time of history led him to answer in the affirmative the question of whether there are experiences of the past that history could not capture. Soon thereafter, however, he drew back from the most extensive articulation of this claim, suggesting that the experiences of the non‐Enlightenment subject could function as a positive resource and not merely as the source of a profound and destabilizing critique. I argue here that this solution to the problem of incommensurability is not entirely satisfactory, for it relies implicitly on precisely the kinds of argumentative asymmetries of which his earlier analysis taught us to be wary. Chakrabarty himself, meanwhile, has continued to step further away from the radicalism of the early 1990s; his most recent book may be read as a defense of rationalist history in the face of contemporary threats posed by the rise of a politics of identity in India.     

THE POLITICS OF LOCAL GROWTH CONTROL

Local growth controls are categorized as controlling class composition, growth location, or growth rate. Literature concerning the motives for adopting these types of growth controls is examined. Four case studies are presented, two involving growth rate controls and two concerned with growth phasing (locational) controls. Our findings agree with earlier ones that tax minimization and quality of services are the chief motives for rate and location controls, followed by “environmental protection,” often meaning view protection or preventing traffic increases. Agricultural protection was a major factor in two of the cases. We found no desires for economic exclusion or property value enhancement in the adoption of the controls. Questions remain, however, concerning the exclusionary effect of perpetuating rate controls.     

THE POLITICS OF MEASURING POVERTY AMONG THE ELDERLY

We discuss the special problems associated with efforts to measure poverty among the elderly. Income measures must be adjusted for a variety of non-income sources of well-being such as net worth, human capital, and in-kind, transfers. While such adjustments are needed, efforts to date are problematic to the extent that new sources of error are introduced. A close analysis of official government measures of poverty reveals that they reflect a variety of political assumptions and compromises. Examination of the eligibility criteria associated with various government social programs for the elderly reveal implicit poverty lines that differ from the official poverty lines. The importance of these operational poverty lines cannot be overestimated.     

THE TIME OF POLITICS,THE POLITICS OF TIME,AND POLITICIZED TIME: AN INTRODUCTION TO CHRONOPOLITICS

Time is so deeply interwoven with all aspects of politics that its centrality to the political is frequently overlooked. For one, politics has its own times and rhythms. Secondly, time can be an object and an instrument of politics. Thirdly, temporal attributes are used not only to differentiate basic political principles but also to legitimize or delegitimize politics. Finally, politics aims at realizing futures in the present or preventing them from materializing. Consequently, the relationship between politics and time encompasses a broad spectrum of phenomena and processes that cry out for historicization. In our introduction to this History and Theory theme issue on chronopolitics, we argue that the concept of chronopolitics makes it possible to do this and, in the process, to move the operation of rethinking historical temporalities from the periphery toward the center of historiographical attention as well as to engage in a dialogue with scholars from a wide range of disciplines. To this end, we propose a broad concept of chronopolitics by discussing existing definitions, by distinguishing between three central dimensions of chronopolitics (the time of politics, the politics of time, and politicized time), and by systematizing possible approaches to studying chronopolitics.