Often dismissed as ‘rumblings of the street’, popular politics is where political modernity is being formed. The rise of mass politics across the world has led to the development of new techniques of governing populations. On the one hand, the idea of popular sovereignty has gained wide acceptance. On the other, the proliferation of security and welfare technologies has created modern governmental bodies that administer populations but do not provide arenas for democratic deliberation. Under these conditions, democracy is no longer government of, by, and for the people. It is a world of power whose starting dimensions and unwritten rules of engagement Chatterjee provocatively lays bare, arguing that the rise of identity politics is a consequence of these new techniques of governmental administration. Using contemporary examples, he examines the different forms taken by the politics of the governed, many of which operate outside civil society and the formal legal institutions of state.
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