Empire and imperialism in contemporary political theory

Rethinking the link between accumulation and difference in Partha Chatterjee and David Harvey

Abstract

The article examines the concepts of imperialism and empire as developed by David Harvey and Partha Chatterjee. Harvey sought to update the tradition of Marxist political economy on imperialism through the notions of “accumulation by dispossession” and “spatio-temporal adjustments”. For Chatterjee empire accounts for a historical political form, which rules on the basis of the management of colonial difference. The central question is whether there is a common ground between “accumulation by dispossession” and “colonial difference” that allows the sociology of empires to be reconciled within a critical anti- -Eurocentric theory.